“A Minister of Artificial Intelligence who is the age of my son, appointed to regulate a hypothetical technology, proves to me that your government has too much time and resources on its hands.” Those were the words of a senior government official during a bilateral meeting in 2017, soon after I was appointed as the world’s first Minister for Artificial Intelligence. Upon hearing that remark, I distinctly recall feeling a pang of indignation by their equating youth with incompetence, but even more so by their clear disregard and trivialization of AI.
Six years into my role of leading the UAE’s strategy to become the most prepared country for AI, the past year has been an exhilarating sprint of unprecedented AI advancements. From ChatGPT to Midjourney to HyenaDNA. It is now undeniable that AI is no longer a hypothetical technology, but one that warrants far more government time and resources across the globe.
I see a resemblance between these breakthroughs and the progression humanity has witnessed in areas such as mobility. Think of the evolution from horses to planes in just a few decades, where today horseback travel simply cannot compete with a 900 km/h aircraft, and extrapolate from that example to where the evolution of AI computation will take us. We are riding horses today. From Pascal’s calculator to the future of AI, the human mind will be eclipsed in both speed and complexity. Imagine, if you will, a veritable ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’ of technology. You write a prompt into this vessel and from it, like the genie of lore, springs forth your every digital wish. This is the exciting future we will live to experience.
However, at the risk of sounding the alarm, the potential for harm is colossal. Throughout history, we have witnessed catastrophic events galvanize governments into regulating technology: the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 led to a revision of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safety guidelines; the Tenerife airport disaster of 1977 where two Boeing 747s collided led to standardized phraseology in air traffic control. An ‘Aladdin’s Genie’ going awry could result in a disaster on a scale we’ve never seen before. This could include everything from the paralysis of critical infrastructure by rogue AI, to the breakdown of trust in information because of believable deepfakes being spread by bots, to cyber threats that lead to substantial loss of human life. The impact far transcends the operations of an airport or the geographic boundaries of a city. Simply put, we cannot afford to wait for an AI catastrophe to regulate it.
In the face of such potential negative impact, accelerated by the continuous development of AI, it’s clear that traditional models of governance and regulation, that take years to formulate, are acutely ill-equipped. And this is coming from a person who has spent a third of his life regulating emerging technology in the UAE. An act to regulate AI that only comes into effect years down the line is not a benchmark for agility nor effectiveness. Furthermore, a single nation in our current global order, bound by borders and bureaucracy, is simply unable to grapple with a force as global and rapidly advancing as AI.
This calls for a fundamental reimagination of governance, one that is agile in its process and multilateral in its implementation. We must embrace the approach of pioneers like Elon Musk, who simultaneously alert us to the perils of unregulated AI while utilizing it to vigorously push the boundaries of humanity forward. We too must straddle this line, treating these alerts as malleable guardrails that guide rather than hinder AI’s development. Doing so requires dispelling the danger of ignorance around AI in government.
Beyond broadening government horizons, we must adopt a rational, simple and measured approach towards AI regulation, one that does not throttle innovation or inhibit adoption. Suppose an AI is faced with two critically ill patients, but resources only permit one to be treated. Who should the AI prioritize? Gone are the days of labyrinthine thousand-page policy documents that set an unattainable standard of compliance. Our focus must pivot towards embracing a blueprint, reminiscent of the simplicity found in Isaac Asimov’s famed ‘Three Laws of Robotics’. The first law prevents the AI from harming humans, or through inaction, allow humans to be harmed. Therefore, this law would defer the two critically ill patients’ conundrum to a human, who would rely on their ethical procedures and human judgment to make the decision.
These may be universal axioms that remain unshaken by the development of AI because their validity isn’t a matter of scientific proof, but rather a hallmark of our shared humanity when navigating the next AI trolley problem. They would remind us, and future generations to come, that AI must always be in service to human values, not the other way around.
I stand for a nation that has grown from global interconnection and international cooperation. I urge my counterparts across the world to convene and forge a consensual framework of universal basic laws for AI. This framework will provide the scaffolding from which we devise a variety of legislations from intellectual property to computational carbon footprint. Above all else, I firmly believe in our collective capacity to reimagine a new approach to AI governance, one that is agile, multilateral and most importantly, one that is now.
This breakdown of the documentary A Disturbance in the Force was originally published when the movie debuted at the 2023 SXSW Conference. It has been updated for the movie’s digital release.
For a couple of decades after its one-time-only broadcast on Nov. 17, 1978, The Star Wars Holiday Special was a secret handshake among nerds.“Weird Al” Yankovic’s “White & Nerdy” video contains a scene where Al buys a bootleg VHS of the special in an alley next to a dumpster, winking at how much currency this infamous televised fiasco had among fans in the days before YouTube. Now, a quick search on that particular site will pull up multiple full-length uploads of the special — much to the presumed angst of George Lucas, who has publicly expressed his desire to destroy every copy of Star Wars’ first big misstep himself.
Just because The Star Wars Holiday Special is easier to find in 2023 doesn’t make it any less baffling, however. Once a fan discovers its existence and watches it, however they’re able to access it — Lucasfilm has never officially released The Star Wars Holiday Special, and probably never will — a series of questions inevitably follow. “What?!” comes first, followed by “Why?” and “How?” The documentaryA Disturbance in the Force seeks to answer these queries.
The film kicks off with the “WTF?” of it all, in a montage that includes sound bites from pop culture talking heads like Seth Green and Kevin Smith, both of whom have inextricably tied their personas to their love ofStar Wars. These are intercut with legacy clips of Star Wars actors, including Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, refusing to discuss the special, setting it up as a holy grail and appealing mystery: “The Star Wars oddity they don’t want you to see!”
This part of the film isfine. It’s fun and it’s lively, but it doesn’t really add anything to the legend. Then the film brings in people who can answer the questions raised by the special, rather than simply restating them in colorful ways, and A Disturbance in the Force becomes something far richer and more interesting.
Photo: Lucasfilm
The most surprising thing A Disturbance in the Force reveals about The Star Wars Holiday Special is the caliber of talent involved. The crew was the best 1978 television had to offer, and CBS called in its top stars to make appearances on the show. And yet, somewhere, somehow, everything went to hell. Here are a few questions that are actually addressed in A Disturbance in the Force:
Why does The Star Wars Holiday Special exist?
In short, because of a combination of conventional wisdom about movie promotion in the late ’70s and George Lucas’ spite toward 20th Century Fox. At the time, Star Warswas not embedded in our cultural consciousness the way it is now, and studio executives thought the enthusiasm about the movie would be temporary, in spite of its box-office success. An executive told Lucas that in a meeting in the summer of 1977, and Lucas began pushing to get Star Wars characters on TV as much as possible, to prove that exec wrong. (The fact that Star Warstoys were still being rolled out a year after the movie first hit theaters, and that Lucas had a personal financial stake in the sales of those toys, didn’t hurt.)
Why the song and dance numbers, though?
At the time, variety specials were TV staples — more common than rollicking sci-fi adventures told in the style of old-fashioned serials, which meant that Lucas’ new movie model got stuffed in an old box to sell it to the masses. A Disturbance in the Force argues that The Star Wars Holiday Special was not the worst of Star Wars’ late-’70s TV appearances: That honor goes to a 1977 episode of Donny & Marie in which Donny Osmond played Luke, Marie Osmond played Leia (who was, at the time, still Luke’s love interest, not his sister), and Kris Kristofferson played Han. The clips shown in the doc support this thesis.
Why does The Star Wars Holiday Specialfeel so disjointed?
A combination of factors comes into play here. First, the original director, David Acomba, was fired after three days for spending most of the show’s budget within those 72 hours. Steve Binder, a pro who had also directed the Elvis ’68 comeback special, stepped in to finish the job. But Binder had another commitment that prevented him from being involved with the editing of the special, so that job fell to a pair of producers named Ken and Mitzie Welch, who had made plenty of variety shows, but knew nothing about editing, Star Wars, or sci-fi in general.
Who designed all those wild costumes?
Bob Mackie, who was RuPaul’s and Whitney Houston’s favorite fashion designer, and the premiere costumer for film and TV in the late 1970s. Mackie, now 84, has a great sense of humor about the whole thing, and his interviews are a highlight of the film.
Photo: Lucasfilm
Why does Bea Arthur nuzzle up with a rat in the cantina?
Like the rest of the masks used in The Star Wars Holiday Special’s cantina scene — and the original Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars, for that matter — the rat was a leftover from another production that effects artist Rick Baker had worked on in the past. The rat was also featured in the 1976 creature feature The Food of the Gods.
Why do Chewbacca and his family speak in unsubtitled Shyriiwook for nine minutes?
More misguided conventional wisdom: CBS executives thought viewers would change the channel if they saw subtitles.
Why is Jefferson Starship in The Star Wars Holiday Special?
Because they had a song called “Hyperdrive,” and the band had “Starship” in its name. Really.
Was Lucasfilm embarrassed by the special after it aired?
Not really. TV was more ephemeral in the days before VCRs became commonplace, and interviewees in the doc who saw The Star Wars Holiday Special as kids say that they and their peers thought it was awesome — mostly because of its Boba Fett cartoon, which marks Fett’s first official appearance in the universe. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni were two of those kids, which is why Mando’s rifle on The Mandalorianis modeled after Fett’s on the holiday special.
Is Disney embarrassed by the special now?
The company has started selling Life Day merchandise, and has declared Nov. 17 — the day the special aired on CBS — as an officialStar Wars holiday in its theme parks. So, as always with Disney: It’s fine with any ancillary product, so long as the company can make money off of it.
Why does Chewie’s dad Itchy celebrate Life Day by watching Wookiee porn?
Some mysteries are best left unsolved. All we know is that Cher was supposed to play the Diahann Carroll role, but dropped out at the last minute.
A Disturbance in the Force is now available for digital rental via Amazon, Vudu, and Apple.
The Biden Administration’s green industrial policy was put to the test last year. Even with the support of subsidies and tariffs, U.S. solar manufacturers struggled to compete with the flood of cheap solar panels pouring out of China into the global market. While some argue that the U.S. should loosen restrictions on cheap Chinese solar panels to accelerate renewable energy deployment, this approach is unsustainable.
2023 was a bumpy year in the race to deploy renewable energy. In the U.S., rising interest rates, delayed guidance for tax credit eligibility, and a project permitting process desperately in need of reform tempered deployment. However, solar emerged as a bright spot, accounting for three-fifths of new renewable electricity capacity worldwide. According to the International Energy Agency, solar is the only renewable technology being deployed at a rate to meet net zero by 2050 targets.
While this trend is good news for the climate, it is better news for China. Just a decade ago, China supplied 40% of the world’s solar panels. Today, its global market share is over 80%, a near monopoly.
It’s no accident that China is so well positioned to capitalize on this solar boom. In the mid-2000s, China’s government invested hundreds of billions of dollars into developing its renewables manufacturing sector, focusing on what officials have since dubbed “the new three:” electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells.
Highly integrated supply chains, innovative manufacturing techniques, and consistent government support aided the growth of China’s solar industry. As did its massive domestic market—China boasts nearly four times the installed solar capacity of the U.S., which is the world’s second-largest market. However, the Chinese solar industry’s ambitions extend beyond satiating the globe’s most power-hungry economy, China. Solar exports from China increased 34% in the first half of 2023 compared to the previous year.
China’s solar manufacturing industry has played a crucial role in accelerating the global deployment of renewable energy. But this green patina obscures a darker truth.
The connection between the Chinese solar industry and the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang is well-documented. Between one-third and one-half of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon is produced in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The U.S. has limited direct solar imports from China through policies such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and tariffs established to protect American industry from dumping and non-competitive practices. Yet, many solar modules assembled in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, the largest sources of U.S. solar panels, use Chinese components. Today, a majority of solar modules produced globally can be traced to the Uyghur Region.
While Chinese solar panels may produce carbon-emissions-free energy, producing these panels is not so environmentally friendly. Coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, accounts for a majority of China’s electricity generation. In Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the most energy-intensive step in the solar panel manufacturing process, polysilicon refining, is concentrated, coal accounts for 77% of power generation. As a result, a recent study found that solar panels manufactured in China produce 30% more greenhouse gas emissions than if this supply chain was reshored to the U.S.
Furthermore, China’s continued solar dominance jeopardizes the security of the U.S. and its allies. In 2021, the European Union relied on Russia for nearly half of its total natural gas consumption. The EU paid a heavy price for placing its energy security in the hands of Vladimir Putin. While some environmental advocates argue that renewable energy cannot be weaponized like fossil fuels, this is deeply naïve. Today, Europe is the destination for more than half of all Chinese solar exports. Once again, our European allies are selling their security for cheap energy. The U.S. must not make the same mistake. Though the trade dynamics of solar modules and fossil fuels differ, overwhelming reliance on any one country, particularly a hostile country, poses a real security threat.
Critics of the Biden Administration’s green protectionism argue that eschewing cheap Chinese solar panels slows the energy transition. This may partly be true. Yet, while Chinese solar panels are 20% cheaper than their American equivalents, this number is not the difference between the success and failure of the U.S. solar energy industry. High interest rates and the permitting quagmire must also be addressed.
Ending China’s dominant position in the global solar market is not possible. It benefits from a massive head start. However, the U.S. should work to loosen China’s chokehold. The domestic clean energy manufacturing incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act are a start. The Biden Administration can also re-impose tariffs on Chinese-made solar components routed through Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, it can pressure the European Union and other allies to take a stronger stand against Chinese solar companies’ anti-competitive behaviors and human rights violations. Finally, the Biden Administration should work with allies like India to strengthen their solar manufacturing capacity, taking advantage of lower labor costs.
This strategy may slightly slow the deployment of solar energy. However, the alternative—allowing China’s global solar monopoly to continue—is simply too high of a price to pay.
With the recent international success of live-action adaptations of manga and anime like One Piece and Yu Yu Hakusho, Netflix finally seems to have made solid forward progress on a process that it has spent a few years on. Though some major franchises remain in development (no real news on that My Hero Academia movie yet aside from “production might have started”) the streaming service has amassed quite a list to run through if you’re interested.
Now, whether that interest is genuine or morbid is up to you. The live-action adaptations of anime and manga on Netflix were certainly not made equally. And while some creative choices make the series feel like fitting spiritual successors to the source material, others remain baffling or simply disappointing. Note that if an adaptation consists of more than one film, the sequels will be judged alongside the originals here.
13. Rurouni Kenshin, Rurouni Kenshin: The Final, Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
Image: Warner Bros. Japan
The three Rurouni Kenshin films available on Netflix are fine. Director Keishi Otomo does his best to bring the thrilling (and often surprisingly violent) battles to life, and the results are admirable when not chopped up in intense, jumpy editing. The character development, particularly of the lead character, can’t escape comparisons to the source material. In the manga series, protagonist Himura Kenshin is a vibrant man of contradictions, capable of both immense destruction and charming affability, and actor Takeru Satoh does his best with it (it’s clear that he put a lot of work into sword fight training). But it too often feels like an impression of a character rather than a fully realized one.
While this is a more positive take than some you’ll read ahead, it’s hard to recommend any aspect of the franchise thanks to the actions of author Nobuhiro Watsuki. Getting little more than a slap on the wrist for being discovered with an immense amount of child pornography, Watsuki’s legacy (and the series which he is known for) is stained, and as such, these three films are impossible to wholeheartedly endorse.
12. Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead
Photo: Masako Iwasaki/Netflix
The concept behind this manga series (what if the zombie apocalypse allowed you to quit your wage slave existence and live life the way you want?) is undeniably fun, but the Netflix series is never quite able to hone in on it. It doesn’t help that it debuted in the middle of the first season of the anime, a refreshing, colorful experience that, despite its various episode delays, took the energetic scope of the manga and ran with it. With two strong comparison pieces, the film becomes little more than a lighthearted exercise in Netflix covering its franchising bases. Watch this only if animation gives you hives or something.
11. Cowboy Bebop
Photo: Geoffrey Short/Netflix
Likely the most infamous series on this list is Cowboy Bebop, an adaptation of the most widely praised anime of all time. In retrospect, it seems ill conceived to have put so much pressure on it to tap into the inimitable cool of director Shinichiro Watanabe’s masterpiece. The anime’s combination of noir aesthetics, space opera grandness, moody character work, and all that jazz makes it unfair to compare it to, well, most other works of fiction. Adapting Cowboy Bebop into live action was a big swing from the top of a high mountain, and sadly, it was a miss.
If it succeeds in anything, it’s the dedication of its cast, particularly the lead, John Cho. Given the unenviable task of trying to replicate a character whose mix of mystery and relatability only really works in animation, Cho is as adequate as any live-action performance of Spike Spiegel could be. The same goes for Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, and though her quips have been reduced to mocking memes, Daniella Pineda’s Faye Valentine can be really fun when divorced from its connection to the anime. The rest, however, is a mess that does little more than fumble through Watanabe’s work.
10. Death Note
Photo: James Dittiger/Netflix
Death Note is a weird case. On paper, it has elements that should work. The story is a thriller that seems easy to trim down into a shorter movie length. It’s not so fantastical as to leave one wondering, “Well, how are they gonna pull that off?” And it has Willem Dafoe voicing the death god Ryuk. Willem Dafoe! When assembled, though, none of it coalesces, and it falls apart instantly.
The decision to turn main character Light from the sociopathic deity wannabe of the manga into an angsty outsider meant that, in the mental duel between him and super detective L, there was really no one to root for. This decision takes the effortless drive of the manga and anime and renders it inert. Even when the titular murder journal falls into even more unscrupulous hands, the film is too dragged down to enter its “Oooh, maybe there will be a sequel…” resolution with any excitement. Better luck next time (probably).
9. Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Final Alchemy
Image: Netflix
There are a lot of great ways to enjoy Fullmetal Alchemist — its fantastic manga, its underrated 2003 anime, or its faithful anime reboot from 2009. The Netflix live-action trilogy doesn’t quite join that pedestal. It’s a fun time if you’ve read the manga previously, but there’s so much crammed in (particularly in the third film, where the glue and tape of editing the narrative down are most apparent) that it’s never clear why anything, outside of the two main brother characters, is important. It’s a trilogy of films, but it only manages to skim the surface of the series’ emotional depth and exquisite themes.
8. Kakegurui
Image: Netflix
Kakegurui doesn’t have to make any big special effects or labyrinthine plotline leaps to work as a TV series. Instead, it mostly sticks to the manga and the joy of the chemistry of the three leads: teenagers in a private academy where status is determined by gambling. It’s an easy watch, though Netflix has yet to add the live-action film where the actors reprise their roles.
7. Bleach
Image: Netflix
You can tell how old someone is by how they recommend Bleach. Older manga fans remember the dynamic, genre-bouncing early days, while those who came in later likely know it by how it fell into a swamp of storytelling tropes and incomprehensibility. Luckily, the live-action Bleach film harnesses a lot of the mythology when it was at its most potent before manga author Tite Kubo exhausted it. In fact, the film’s best quality is that it’s able to deftly build its world without feeling like it’s preparing the audience for a pop quiz after. Whereas a few of these adaptations, like the aforementioned Fullmetal Alchemist, approach the details of the manga in vague, bullet-point fashion, Bleach weaves them into its story, which uplifts a film that is otherwise middling in most respects.
6. The Ingenuity of the Househusband
Image: Netflix
Disclaimer: The Ingenuity of the Househusband is not a direct adaptation of the delightful manga series The Way of the Househusband. You’ll have to watch the lackluster anime series for that. Instead, it’s a collection of shorts that show the husband, a former yakuza boss, dealing with various domestic duties, like making coffee or fixing a screen door. It’s cute and certainly doesn’t aim for the heights of anything else on this list. But playing it safe is its most appealing quality, and it serves as a pleasant side gig for fans of the manga (which you should read.)
5. Kingdom
Image: Juhan Noh/Netflix
Kingdom, running at over two hours, is one of the most fun efforts of Shinsuke Sato (a director who, having helmed films like Gantz, I Am a Hero, and Bleach, is a go-to in the space). It’s also a noble attempt at tackling a manga/historical fiction series that, to date, runs 70 volumes. Very little of the emotional weight of the manga carries over, but Sato brings undeniable visual panache to the battle choreography and stunt work here. Kingdom is best when it’s pure spectacle, with sequences that even folks with no connection to the manga can enjoy. At one point, during a barrage of arrows, the camera lingers briefly on a man that dies from having been shot through the mouth by one. What’s not to like?
4. Alice in Borderland
Image: Netflix
Directed by Shinsuke Sato (jeez, that man is everywhere), Alice in Borderland is a series that thrives whenever you don’t have to think too much about the “who” of it all. Character development is slim — the actors are mostly around to look tense and nervous in a Battle Royale-esque survival situation where they have to win “games” to survive. Even if new viewers might compare it to Squid Game but without all that pesky social commentary, Sato is very good at building stakes and making you grip the sides of your chair as you wonder who is going to get gruesomely murdered next.
3. From Me to You
Image: Netflix
This live-action adaptation of a powerhouse shojo manga (Another “If you haven’t read it, go read it right now!” series) was never going to approach the charms of its source material. Karuho Shiina’s art, both quirky and engrossing as it expresses the blushing warmth of young love, would leave any live-action adaptation struggling to fit in. So From Me to You mostly works as a tribute to an irreplaceable series and, as such, does an exceptional job. It’s got cuteness to spare and the dedication of its lead performers carries it through any stumbles.
2. Yu Yu Hakusho
Image: Netflix
Yu Yu Hakusho’s main offense is that it’s just too short. At only five episodes (which cover over 100 chapters of manga), there’s simply no time to get through everything. As such, events that would otherwise be big emotional moments (especially in the latter half, which is full of them) get little more than a shrug. However, the first half of the series is rather marvelous. The fight choreography in the opening battles is top-notch, and the way we get to know each of the four main beloved boys is appropriately awesome. It also handles the tonal shifts of the story well, jumping from genre to genre (horror to fantasy to martial arts to comedy) adeptly. And just as in the Yu Yu Hakusho manga and anime, co-lead Kuwabara shines through with his trademark masculine insecurity and swaggering pathos.
1. One Piece
Image: Netflix
It’s weird to live in a world where we not only got a serviceable live-action One Piece adaptation, but one that’s good enough to adequately capture the spirit of the manga. Eiichiro Oda’s epic, 25-plus-year saga is such a testament to the power of manga art that trying to recreate it with flesh and blood, on first glance, looks like a dumbfounding proposition. But Netflix’s One Piece found a way.
This is mostly thanks to the enthusiasm of its cast, who are all able to capture the broad emotional swings of the characters without falling into parody, and what looks to be an every-penny-spent approach on set design. There are so many practical flourishes, from the exteriors of the ships and seaside towns to the interiors of locations like Kaya’s mansion and the Baratie floating restaurant, that it manages to feel less like an imitation of Oda’s world and more like its own entity. The commitment paid off: The astounding viewership of One Piece’s first season led Netflix to greenlight a season 2, one that, from the looks of things, will be a flagship (pun intended) addition to the service’s manga-to-live-action lineup.
It’s easy to think of Denzel Washington as the best actor of his generation, and in conversation with the greatest actors who have ever lived. He already has two Oscars, and has deserved many more. And with the recent release of The Equalizer 3 on Netflix, it’s the perfect time to look back on his body of work and legitimately pose the question: Is he also the greatest action star of his generation?
If Denzel is on screen in a movie made this century, he’s likely got at least one gun on him. Perhaps you’d conclude that, like Liam Neeson, that means Denzel has been on autopilot. But from the beginning, Denzel has had coinciding populist taste, multiplex butter-flavored syrup infused in his cinematic DNA. Amid historical biopics, Civil War epics, and Spike Lee’s formative romantic meditations, there have always been gleeful crowd-pleasers in Denzel’s body of work: noirs, heists, erotic thrillers, and serial killers.
You may ask, is The Manchurian Candidate really an action flick? And the answer is that once, yes it was. Not that long ago, movies could be more than one thing. A prestige drama could have a great tension-packed car chase. A vigilante movie could be about socialized medicine. A noir could also be a time-traveling sci-fi. By cataloging his hits over decades, through Denzel’s resume, we can chart a devolution in what kinds of genre/spectacle films are being made in Hollywood.
If this is the end of that kind of film, it is fitting to celebrate it by honoring Denzel’s great action flicks, and his best moments in them. He remains one of the best who ever did it. Let’s kick some ass.
Honorable mentions that aren’t quite action movies: American Gangster, Cry Freedom, The Tragedy of Macbeth
26. The Taking of Pelham 123
Image: Columbia Pictures/MGM
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Starz, AMC Plus, or for digital rental/purchase
Every one of these movies is a good idea on paper, but this is the most disappointing, because it had the potential to be really special. It’s Denzel and Tony Scott with James Gandolfini, and maybe the last good Tony Manero performance, taking on one of the greatest detail-rich, lived-in New York movies ever made. The original Pelham 123 is a film that really embodies that cliche about the city as a character, and it utilizes it like few movies ever had. It’s about a city of pressed-together schnooks that speak and think like neurotic piece-of-work Jews like me, arguing with each other through the duration of a crisis they all seem more annoyed by than concerned about. This film is entirely drained of that energy, focusing on Scott’s continuing experiments with digital photography instead of the liveliness of the city. Denzel gets to play hostage negotiator versus a scene-chewing John Travolta, and even though Travolta is supposed to be the dominant force in the conversation, Denzel bodies him in most of their exchanges by thinking through his lines.
Best Denzel moment: Confessing to Travolta that he took a bribe to save a hostage’s life, leading to a masterful controlled breakdown over the phone.
25. Safe House
Image: Universal Pictures
Director: Daniel Espinosa Where to watch: Netflix, or for digital rental/purchase
An actually admirable attempt that’s better than what you may remember, Safe House features an old-school Tom Clancy plot about a house cat itching for a taste of the field who finally gets his monkey-paw wish granted. Unfortunately, the movie has either no feel or no time for character development. It’s reaching for the intimate kinetic grit of Paul Greengrass’ Bourne movies via Sam Peckinpah, and of course it doesn’t get there, but I have to respect a movie that pays this much attention to its spycraft. The fun of the film is watching Denzel’s endlessly resourceful old agent think his way out of a series of seemingly impossible dead ends by leaning on his experience and reflexive improvisation. The Achilles heel is that we’re forced to care about a perfunctory Ryan Reynolds love story C-plot when what we want is more Reynolds and Denzel face-offs. For whatever you may feel about Ryan Reynolds’ “gifts,” this humorless film wastes them. Safe House is better than the next three films in many ways, but they have the courage to be weird and take some swings.
Best Denzel moment: The hint of a smile after Denzel comes up from a first session of being waterboarded.
24. The Bone Collector
Image: Universal/Everett Collection
Director: Phillip Noyce Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
Solely based on the title and poster, this feels like it should’ve been Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. But it’s Denzel and young Angelina Jolie, and it is so much worse and stranger than the Morgan/Judd movies. Denzel is quadriplegic and waiting for a seizure that will put him in a vegetative state, and he is desperate to be euthanized. Instead, he becomes the cuddly cop version of a bedridden Hannibal Lecter, with Jolie as his Clarice. The movie anticipates CSI, as the genius and his protege study the crime scenes left by the killer, who has a research-loving crime fiction writer’s interest in historical New York City trivia and lore and communicates directly with forensic investigators via obscure clues. It also presents an alternate universe where most of the NYPD seems to give a fuck about doing their jobs.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel, who doesn’t have the ability to move his arms or legs, destroys a serial killer’s hand and rips off his ear using only his mouth.
23. Virtuosity
Image: Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
Director: Brett Leonard Where to watch: Paramount Plus, free with a library card on Kanopy, free with ads on Pluto
A riff on Frankenstein and the Stallone/Snipes dystopian face-off classic Demolition Man, this is a pretty silly and absurd sci-fi trifle about society, technology, and humanity in the form of a goofball summer thriller. They used to make these inadvertently hilarious techno-thrillers in the ’90s both by and for people with no understanding of how computers work. Virtuosity wins the award for worst CGI on this list, and maybe ever in the history of film? Russell Crowe, as a VR serial killer composite, is made of some cybernetic material that manifests on screen as hair gel tendrils, so he can grow his finger back when it’s chopped off, bullet holes fill back in immediately, etc. You want to give them a pass for the technology not being quite there to execute the vision, but they’re attempting to rip off Terminator 2, a film that was released four years earlier. It’s a more interesting iteration of Denzel’s standard, upstanding, dour straight cop because his character is an ex-cop, ex-con with a dead family and an edge to him, released to track down and kill the film’s true saving grace: young Russell Crowe having more fun than anyone besides Denzel gets to have on this entire list. In fact, here’s a list within a list:
Best Denzel moment: I’d conservatively estimate Denzel shoots cybernetic serial killer composite Russell Crowe 300 times.
22. Ricochet
Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Director: Russell Mulcahy Where to watch: Cinemax
You really have to see this movie to believe it, particularly if your only relationship to John Lithgow is 3rd Rock from the Sun or Love Is Strange. Ricochet is just a completely unhinged, borderline slapstick exploitation film. It’s Cape Fear on meth, and ironically came out the same year. Denzel matches Lithgow’s energy here. He begins the movie stripping to his drawers and shooting a hostage-holding Lithgow with a behind-the-back trick shot, then spends a portion of the movie on drugs ranting and raving in a pink robe. It’s wild shit, and wildly entertaining.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel, to his wife, after handing both of his daughters off to drug-dealing gangster Ice-T’s bodyguard for protection before going after Lithgow for the final showdown, and after his wife finds out he has tested positive for gonorrhea:
“Listen, you were right before. I should’ve trusted you with everything, but now you gotta trust me with everything too. Now, if you don’t love me, tell me right now, because I’m fighting for what used to be my life, and you are all of it. Are you with me?”
[Instant nod from his wife] “Yes.”
21. The Manchurian Candidate
Image: Paramount Pictures
Director: Jonathan Demme Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
So you get Streep as Hillary Clinton and my guys Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, and Bruno Ganz, all directed by Jonathan Demme, in a political thriller about literally incestuous cronyism in party politics, phony patriotism, PTSD, the American war machine, the prison of ambition, and the nefarious influence of special interests on our representatives. Unfortunately, this Manchurian Candidate is unbearably goofy and nothing lands. No one is doing their best work, including Demme. And because it’s a Denzel film, which almost always have tidy resolutions, there isn’t even the conviction to go through with the standard cynical conspiracy thriller ending.
Manchurian provides an interesting opportunity to discuss Denzel and what makes him great. It’s not the worst movie on this list by far, but this is probably my least favorite performance of his, maybe ever. He’s playing this broken, paranoid guy, and it completely robs him of his warmth and charisma. I can’t even really think of another dramatic performance that does that. If you’re into over-the-top metaphors for late-’90s/early-aughts liberal politics, there’s another film down this list I greatly prefer.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel takes his first shot at Liev, trying to convince him they’ve been compromised.
20. Deja Vu
Image: Touchstone Pictures
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental/purchase
Very silly shit. The film doesn’t always respect or really even seem to understand the rules of time augmentation it sets up for itself. It turns into a series of Choose Your Own Adventures where Denzel goes out into the field, then the team back in the lab debates what happened and why and the nature of fate and time. It’s a pretty dry and joyless Denzel performance in a pretty dry and joyless film. Tony Scott gets the game ball for elevating the material. If you want to see a much, much better version of this, I’d recommend the brilliant and heavily slept-on Source Code.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel, watching helplessly from the future, reacting to his partner getting killed because he inadvertently led him to his death by meddling with the past.
19. Fallen
Image: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Director: Gregory Hoblit Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
What is this movie? A detective stumbling upon, then attempting to fight, a demonic consciousness of an evil angel passed by physical touch? What is its objective? To destroy humanity at the rate of one detective in a cabin in the woods every few decades? This is a borderline horror flick, but we’ve decided to classify it as a supernatural thriller. Unlike some of the films above, it’s pretty good at staying faithful to its dumb conceit and sticking to the rules it establishes. I also believe it’s probably the only film on this list where Denzel actually loses. But it’s Denzel doing his version of a Philip Marlowe — up against an angel-demon, of course, but still a good time.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel thinks he’s killed the demon and starts singing its own theme song back at it.
18. The Equalizer
Image: Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
A fine action film, I guess. It’s Denzel’s bid for his own Mission: Impossible, another old piece of TV IP barely tethered to its superstar’s modern, globe-trotting franchise machine. You could also call it his John Wick, but unlike that film, it’s a movie that’s both too serious and not serious enough. Wick just had its best installment by far because it leaned into the over-the-top giddy spectacle of a phantasmagoric blood opera. The Equalizer is no fun. It also doesn’t have any real stakes. Denzel simply, methodically kills his way through an army of bland Russians with no tension, or any remote sense of danger or threat. Denzel is an inevitable guardian angel of death, with no flaws or weaknesses, so none of the kills mean that much to him, or to the film, or to us. The result is a competent slog, but as the rest of his body of work proves, we used to demand more from our “mindless” blood-soaked genre movies.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel gets one speech, at dinner with a Russian bad guy whose full-body tattoos make Master Gardener appear modest by comparison, and obviously nails it.
17. The Book of Eli
Image: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
Directors: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase
A pretty fascinating, high-concept misfire: a Kung Fu dystopian Western about Christianity. Denzel is the lonely wandering ronin who lives simply and humbly off the land after a human-made apocalypse. He adheres to his own code, navigating an American wasteland overrun by scavengers and cannibals. Denzel doesn’t make many films about his faith, but this one is clearly deeply felt by both the directors and their star. The only “disappointment” for me is Gary Oldman, who is fine, but casting him as your bad guy means you’re walking on sacred ground, and through no fault of his own we get maybe 60% of the way to a The Professional/True Romance/Fifth Element-level performance.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel, gut-shot and dying, recites the entirety of the King James Bible by heart so it can be committed to page and reintroduced to society.
16. The Magnificent Seven
Image: Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
Denzel on a horse! If Fallen is Denzel channeling Bogart, here he channels John Wayne, albeit in the classic Badass Black Cowboy’s mustache-and-mutton-chop pairing. He has a death wish, and he’s enjoying himself. Can’t understate how special it is seeing one of the greatest movie stars of this era imprinting on a nearly extinct form of American cinema, even if it’s not the great film the cast list and trailer promised. It gets maybe 70% of the way there. Needed some shock and awe, some Eli Wallach energy. Instead, it typifies this tier on the list of competent and unspectacular popcorn flicks.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel eats a heart.
15. The Equalizer 2
Image: Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase
Improved on the original because of a crucial plot point that actually lends the story purpose (killing Melissa Leo), but not by much. I don’t really have much else to say about it, so for fun:
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel demands, and gets, a five-star Uber rating from the women-abusing frat bros he beats the shit out of in their apartment.
14. The Little Things
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: John Lee Hancock Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
Notable because Denzel really leans into being paunchy and washed. We’re not quite hitting Roman J. Israel levels, but we’re not far off. The headline is a three-hander with Denzel and two weirdos with Oscars. But it’s Denzel’s dumber and less meticulous diet-Fincher. A film about obsession and the inability to live with life’s mysteries. The ball is fumbled in the red zone, and its resolution is problematic to say the least, but for much of its run time it’s atmospheric and well paced, and Denzel is unsurprisingly great as a detective battling madness and the mess he made of his life.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel has a heart-to-heart with the corpse of a murder victim that is legitimately some of his best work.
13. 2 Guns
Image: Universal/Everett Collection
Director:Baltasar Kormákur Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental/purchase
This one’s based on a series of graphic novels by Steven Grant, with a screenplay from Blake Masters, who has worked primarily as a network TV workhorse, and there’s the issue. It needed to be 20-30% funnier. You see from the beginning what they’re going for, two frenemies bickering over a diner breakfast order and how much to tip as they cooly set the building on fire and head to their muscle car without looking back just before it explodes. It’s Avary/Tarantino/McQuarrie-in-the-’90s quippy action comedy territory. There’s still fun to be had: a heist, a lot of Mark Wahlberg with his eyebrows raised, ending his sentences with upspeak. For the most part, Wahlberg gets to have the lion’s share of the fun, except…
Best Denzel moment: Denzel, whose characters have sex surprisingly rarely considering how much of a sex symbol he has been, has sex with Paula Patton!
12. The Siege
Image: 20th Century Fox
Director: Edward Zwick Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
A messy movie with fraught politics, but generally good ideas: The liberal resistance to the coming fascist post-9/11 Patriot Act world, but also one that is not above the fearmongering, stereotyping, and profiling that made it possible to exist in the first place. The Annette Bening character is probably the focus of an NYU poli sci class this semester. In a lot of ways this is a reprisal of Crimson Tide, with Denzel attempting to posit himself as the voice of liberal reason in the face of a black-and-white fascist.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel makes a stirring but hilariously quaint and naive argument against torture and why it will compromise the constitution and American way of life.
11. Unstoppable
Image: Twentieth Century Fox
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
An admirable simplicity of purpose. This might be the only movie on this list with no gun and no bad guy. It’s a disaster movie, ThePerfect Storm for trains. Purely in terms of direction, it’s Tony Scott’s best work throughout the partnership. Working-class Denzel is the best. How many people in action movies have actual jobs anymore?
Best Denzel moment: I know it had to be a mix of stunt work and green screen, but it’s Denzel hopping from car to car on top of the train, setting the individual brakes, trying to slow it down.
10. The Mighty Quinn
Image: MGM Home Entertainment
Director: Carl Schenkel Where to watch: Prime Video, free with a library card on Hoopla, free with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV
By no means a perfect film, The Mighty Quinn is a product of the late ’80s and feels very much like one (complete with a harebrained, nonsensical resolution). Denzel and the great Robert Townsend are doing borderline parody accents. It’s obvious there was no budget or experience behind the camera to really know how to shoot action. From fistfights to car accidents, those moments are rife with bad transitions and continuity errors. But it’s a fun and original bizarre hybrid: a musical noir set in Jamaica about race, class, imperialism, and corruption. And Denzel is great! He’s a rebel, beset on all sides by superiors who want to sweep a mess under the rug, and he manages a blend of determined, defiant, charming, and dignified while telling his elders to go fuck themselves.
Best Denzel moment: Dezel sings the blues in a piano bar/shack.
9. Out of Time
Image: MGM/Everett Collection
Director: Carl Franklin Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
A blend of Bad Lieutenant and Body Heat. Notable in Denzel’s oeuvre because Matt Lee Whitlock is arguably the biggest loser he’s ever played, a piece of shit constantly working off his back foot (perhaps aside from another cop, Alonzo Harris in Training Day). The film is essentially a series of unlikely narrow escapes a sweat-drenched Denzel has to pull off to fix an escalating pile of fuck-ups and loose ends. Everyone’s slimy and dumb and depraved — a perfect old-school erotic thriller.
Best Denzel moment: When the book is finally closed and we gather to tell the tales and sing the songs, the real Johnny Appleseed, Bunyan, John Henry shit will be the time Denzel literally cucked Superman.
8. The Equalizer 3
Photo: Stefano Montesi/Sony Pictures Entertainment
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Netflix
I’m as shocked as you are, but the third installment of The Equalizer is not just the best of the series, it’s one of Denzel’s best action flicks. If I wasn’t afraid of recency bias, I might’ve ranked it higher. It starts with the fun grindhouse smut I requested in discussing the first installment of the franchise. It’s also much slower, a shockingly patient film that isn’t just about being washed, but actual mortality. It really leans into Denzel, who looks every day of his then 68 years, being old and frail. It’s at times moving, not just about protection or revenge, but rather about finding peace and preserving a way of life in a coastal Italian village.
But the true genius of the film is casting Denzel’s old co-star, Dakota Fanning, as his young protege, which essentially makes the film a Man on Fire sequel. It made me think about Ghost Protocol and Fast Five, two films that elevated their respective franchises by embracing all the old characters who had passed through and reveling in the lore. Why not turn The Equalizer into the Denzel extended universe? Obviously not the same characters across the non-canon films, but let’s bring them all back, Cheadle and Snipes and Owen and Wahlberg and Patton and Pine and Streep. I’ll watch 10 more of these.
Best Denzel moment: The reunion tea with Dakota Fanning.
7. Training Day
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental/purchase
One of my hotter takes is I think the Oscar has unduly raised the appraisal of this pretty goofy film whose message has aged terribly. A great cartoon Denzel performance, full of his most memorable (and I think crucially, quotable) line readings, and cartoons are obviously a lot of fun, but it’s not close to his best, so I won’t belabor the point. All I will say is on this latest rewatch, the “Not All Cops” message embodied by Ethan Hawke’s Boy Scout dignity was particularly grating. Also, I will just never get over the leap off the roof onto the hood of Denzel’s car. Bird-brain shit.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel making Ethan Hawke get wet.
6. Man on Fire
Image: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
Obviously a great film, but Scott’s visual language hasn’t aged well. It’s treated and cut like a Nine Inch Nails video or a Fincher credit sequence. But aside from that, Scott is near his peak here. The camera rarely stops moving, even when it’s two people talking in a room, which adds to the film’s restless, manic energy of pissed-off pulp. Man on Fire is a quasi-religious text about a broken sinner killing his way to redemption. Denzel is that sinner, awash in layers of alcohol and nihilism, attempting to drown his regret. The chemistry with young Dakota Fanning jumps off the screen, and totally sells the extremes he goes to in order to bring her home.
Best Denzel moment: The film-long touching bond between an adorable little girl and her father figure.
5. Inside Man
Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Director: Spike Lee Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
At the outset of this list, I criticized Pelham for not honoring the Jewishness of its text. This film does that. It’s a multi-ethnic and bilingual melting pot of annoyed, annoying, combative, neurotic, and stubborn people getting on each other’s nerves in a high-stress and cramped environment. Or, they’re all “Jewish” New Yorkers. It’s the texture of New York that Pelham completely missed the boat on. Another in a rare sort of Denzel performance: Denzel the dumbass, always a step behind and a second late.
Best Denzel moment: It’s a cooperative with Spike Lee and his calling card, but the revved-up dolly shot might be Lee’s best. Denzel has just fallen for a gag execution, and his laser-focused anger in the shot is a microcosm of the film: He’s a marionette reacting to each step of Clive Owen’s meticulous plan.
4. The Pelican Brief
Image: Warner Bros/Everett Collection
Director: Alan J. Pakula Where to watch: For free with ads on Pluto TV, or for digital rental/purchase
A great, fascinating adaptation from the John Grisham era of ’90s Hollywood blockbusters, when a thought-provoking legal thriller could still be a blockbuster. Two Supreme Court justices are simultaneously assassinated, and a plucky law student (prime Julia Roberts) hacks the plot by studying case histories and following threads in a conspiracy that goes all the way to the Oval Office. Denzel is a determined, dickhead politico journalist who goes on the run with her (but infamously, in what is the film’s only glaring flaw, doesn’t have sex). It’s Pakula’s last great film, and the likes of Sam Shepard, John Lithgow, and Stanley Tucci show up to cook for perhaps three minutes each. It’s a pure piece of nostalgia for a better, lost age of movies.
Best Denzel moment: I’mcurrently working on a tough story with a lot of moving parts, and I greatly appreciate watching Denzel work a source.
3. Crimson Tide
Image: Buena Vista Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase
A chamber drama conveyed through cheesy Dutch angles about fascism and Cold War-era nuclear paranoia, but really on a very short list of the greatest all-time “actors at the top of their games face off” films. Coming off Malcolm X, this movie signaled Denzel becoming the greatest actor in America. He’s riveting as a rebellious son who actually has the upper hand on his father figure and refuses to give an inch. It’s a deceptively simple film — as the two men trade mutinies for control of a nuke — that doesn’t need the scaffolding of a B-, C-, and D-plot. There’s no spouse at home for Denzel to sneak off and spend five minutes with here and there to distract from the basic core of the story. It knows exactly what it is and what it wants to do, and lets its incredible talent fill in the rest.
Best Denzel moment: The shouting match when Denzel backs down Hackman and takes control of the sub.
2. John Q.
Image: New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection
Director: Nick Cassavetes Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
Could hear arguments for this not being an action movie, but I won’t listen. It’sa good old-fashioned Chayefsky-esque message film as agitprop, taking down capitalism, told by a working-class schlub trying to get his son a heart transplant and socialize health care in one Chicago hospital by any means necessary. There is some sermonizing infotainment, but it’s a righteous cause and doesn’t bog down the film or break the tension. It’s moving and thought-provoking, heady stuff for a dumped-out February popcorn thriller, and quite possibly the most emotional Denzel performance on this list and beyond.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel pleading for James Woods to take his heart out of his chest and give it to his son so he can live, and then when he says goodbye to him before the surgery. There’s zero chance you won’t cry.
1. Devil in a Blue Dress
Image: Sony Pictures
Director: Carl Franklin Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase
In these films, it can be easy to lose sight of Denzel’s Blackness. Many of the roles on this list could’ve been played, by design, by any leading actor. Among many, many other elements in this incredible noir, what makes Devil in a Blue Dress special is that Liam Neeson couldn’t play Easy Rawlins. It’s Chinatown for race in America, a raw, sad, thrilling movie that showcases Denzel’s full complement of gifts and the very unique space he’s held in American cinema for 40 years. It’s channeling Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but also Nella Larsen. There are great performances all around, with an outrageous, all-cylinders Don Cheadle being fairly recognized and winning a SAG Best Supporting Actor Award that should’ve been attached to an Oscar. But Denzel is center frame in every shot, and it’s unlike any of his other detective films because when the movie starts, he’s not established, not even a detective. It’s an incredible origin story, as we watch Easy discover his gifts and his calling. If this isn’t his very best performance, it’s on his Mount Rushmore.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel is so caught up having sex with his friend’s girl that he completely forgets about the information he’s ostensibly having the sex to obtain.
Until my early 20s, I believed I was a “normal” sex-haver. I assumed any guilt or repulsion I felt after intimacy was a universal experience. It wasn’t until a year ago that, after hearing me mention that I had repeatedly dissociated after kissing various Tinder dates, my friend said: “You know what asexuality is, right?” I stuttered, offended; of course I knew what it meant, but only in that “jock calling the nerd asexual because he won’t ever get laid” way. She called my bluff and showed me a video from an asexual YouTuber who echoed many of my secret opinions about dating and intimacy. This set me on the path to find as many video essays about asexuality as possible, which explained that I wasn’t broken or in need of the “right person”; my love would just come from somewhere besides sex. Any blueprints for where I might find it or what that love might be instead were a mystery, as I quickly found that asexual representation in media is an absolute travesty.
There’s no easy way to show an identity based around the lack of something rather than its presence, but when you start throwing out SpongeBob as my LGBTQIA+ rep, I know it’s not a serious conversation. Good asexual (aka ace) characters do exist — Bojack Horseman’s resident goofball Todd Chavez is beloved by many for his swagless slacker schemes — but most rely on negative stereotypes that perpetuate the myth of inhumanity among those who don’t build their love lives around sex.
Asexual people in media are represented as dispassionate outcasts who avoid close relationships; they are cold and calculating celibates (like Sherlock Holmes), or they force sex upon themselves to fix their perceived inadequacies (like Olivia from whatever the hell The Olivia Experiment was trying to be). Asexual representation isn’t nearly as prevalent in media as gay, lesbian, or bisexual rep, but three of Netflix’s biggest teenage shows of 2023 — Sex Education, Heartstopper, and Everything Now — featured aces as core characters with storylines dedicated to understanding their identities. Much like their queer antecedents who introduced the general public to non-cis, non-hetero ways of life, these ace characters have to come out and explain themselves. Despite good intentions, it’s hard for each character to not read as a first attempt.
Sex is everywhere in our society, especially during high school, when hormones rage, emotions deepen, and the world cracks open like a spoiled fruit. Putting those primal feelings into words is hard, but that hasn’t stopped Sex Education from highlighting as many sexual identities as possible, including a brief storyline in season 2 in which theater kid Florence (Mirren Mack) recognizes her own asexuality. In a conversation with sex therapist Jean (Gillian Anderson), Florence voices her discontent with social pressures to date and hook up, poignantly stating that she’s “surrounded by a feast” but isn’t hungry. As soon as Florence accepts her ace identity, the series moves on from her; Florence’s sexlessness was a problem to be voiced but not an orientation to be explored.
Photo: Samuel Taylor/Netflix
It wasn’t until the final season this year that the show’s creators went all in on asexuality with Sarah “O” Owen (Thaddea Graham), a woman of color and sex therapist at Cavendish. O acts as a rival and antagonist to series protagonist Otis (Asa Butterfield); so much of the season revolves around Otis’ attempts to reclaim his place as the sole sex therapist on campus. During their bizarre election where students vote for who they most trust to therapize their sexual dilemmas, Otis tries to prove that O is untrustworthy and unreliable by revealing that she ghosted several former partners. To save her reputation, O comes out as asexual and says she ghosted partners because she didn’t know how to talk about it yet — although given all the scheming and scratching she had pulled over the course of the season, you’d be forgiven for thinking her coming out might be a ploy for sympathy. I did.
This misunderstanding became a prevalent enough internet discourse that Yasmin Benoit — an ace activist and woman of color who served as a script consultant for the season — took to X (formerly Twitter) to reveal multiple scenes and lines were changed or cut that addressed both the racial bias and acephobia that O faces throughout the season. Without this additional context, I found it difficult to be as offended as I should have been when Otis accused her of using asexuality as a way to tarnish his image. The show instead portrays O spending most of the season trying to maintain her pristine image, all the way down to her slick influencer branding. This emphasis on her insincerity sometimes obscures how terrible it is that Otis attempts to claim her space and ruin her life.
It isn’t until episode 7 that her backstory dump — which delves into how her schoolmates singled her out for her race and Northern Irish accent, how she felt abnormal because she didn’t have crushes or intimate fantasies, how she felt safe in her sex clinic but felt if she ever told the truth no one would trust her because “who wants to have sex advice from someone who doesn’t have sex?” — finally brings her closer to the character Benoit seemingly set out to create. For me, the damage was already done: O remains a messy, calculating, and isolated asexual, rather than being the thoughtful representation the ace community deserves.
The final season of SexEducation is a mixed bag, but it tries to create a three-dimensional ace character; Heartstopper felt content to stop at character. The show’s second season does a lot to darken its light and fluffy image: It tackles biphobia, abusive parents, and disordered eating. But it never quite knows what to do with Isaac (Tobie Donovan). The laconic bookworm finds himself courted by James (Bradley Riches), and their awkward flirtations are drawn out for most of the season until they finally kiss in a Parisian hotel’s hallway. Isaac seems repelled by the intimacy and is sent into a spiral — though we don’t see it. Isaac’s explanation to James in the following episode is familiar to asexuals: He has never had a crush on someone and hoped that maybe James would be different. But he wasn’t.
Photo: Samuel Dore/Netflix
When his friends cajole him for details about the kiss, Isaac snaps, yelling that he knows they don’t find his life interesting with its lack of romantic drama. It’s a sentiment shared by series creator Alice Oseman herself, who identifies as aromantic and asexual (aroace) and in an interview with The Guardian stated, “The world is obsessed with sex and romance. And if you don’t have that, you feel like you haven’t achieved something that’s really important.” In her novel Loveless, she tries to explore narratives where romance and sex aren’t the main focus with aroace protagonist Georgia. But where Georgia has 400-plus pages to grow and change, Isaac’s character can only come out in bits and spurts around the central romance between Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke). We never get to know his personality or desires, so Isaac’s frustration with his friends seemingly comes from nowhere.
Literally two minutes after his outburst, Isaac meets an artist exhibiting a piece about their aroace identity, and everything they say resonates with him: the loneliness of existing in a world that prizes romance and sex when you don’t feel those attractions, the confusion that comes with feeling different without the words to describe it, the freedom of letting go of those external expectations and existing as yourself. Isaac immediately accepts himself as aroace. It’s a beautiful sentiment hamstrung by the fact that Isaac was just given the answers to his identity problems, no introspection necessary.
Image: Netflix
By contrast, Everything Now is a show without easy answers; its depiction of disordered eating, substance abuse, sexual intimacy, and mental health struggles are important if not always easy to watch. While much of the series focuses on recovering anorexic Mia’s (Sophie Wilde) return to high school after a brief hospitalization, it was her friend Will (Noah Thomas) who captured my heart. Will is boisterous, confident, and fashionable, traits that he claims won the lusty affection of the cheesemonger at his workplace. Except the cheesemonger doesn’t know his name, and when “Cheese Guy” eventually does try to hook up with him, Will runs away. Will is embarrassed about his virginity and chooses to lean into the stereotype of the promiscuous gay man, as if cultivating the image of a sex-haver will absolve him from engaging in something that repulses him.
After a drunk Mia reveals his lie to a party full of their classmates, Will hides in the bathroom. He’s uncharacteristically quiet and embarrassed, compressing himself as tightly as possible into the bathtub. His sulking is interrupted by Theo (Robert Akodoto), a nice and popular schoolmate. Despite Will’s protestations, Theo stays and comforts him. Will echoes O and Isaac here: He feels broken for not wanting sex, and that something must be wrong with him. Theo suggests that maybe Will needs a connection to engage in romantic or sexual intimacy, and the next day the two kiss passionately and start dating. Although it’s never stated outright, Will’s requirement for emotional connection to precede intimacy is a sign that he’s demisexual, an even smaller sliver of the asexual pie that often goes unrepresented. Being in a relationship isn’t an easy adjustment for Will; he worries that Theo will eventually want sex or something more that he isn’t willing to give. The anxiety overwhelms Will and, despite Theo’s willingness to take things slow, he refuses to discuss his fear of intimacy and ultimately ends the relationship.
These Asexuality 101-esque narratives feel reminiscent of the early aughts, when queer characters were defined by their otherness in an effort to educate rather than represent. They’re the type of stories that I needed to hear growing up, stories that gently told me that I wasn’t broken while placing me on a path toward self-acceptance. After a year of research and introspection, however, their lack of nuance feels half-baked, especially in comparison to the three-dimensional queer characters who surround them. Asexuality is a complicated identity where multiple conflicting truths can coexist. Aces might feel little to no sexual attraction, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t date, fall in love, or even have sex if we so desire; seeking fulfillment through solely platonic relationships is equally valid, and, too often, narratively unexplored. O, Isaac, and Will hint at a future where we might see asexuality with all its complexity on our screens. Maybe by then, the universal feeling won’t be that we are broken. Maybe it will be that we are just a little different.
On a drizzly February afternoon, I arrive at a modest, three-story building a stone’s throw from Kyoto’s Kamo River. A plaque reads “PLAYING CARDS” in gold letters against a staid shade of dark green, next to a stylish double door flanked by a pair of bright-red flags. Around the entrance, the pale brick facade has a distinctive mix of 1930s-style art deco curves and linear graphic stonework; it’s clear that in this quiet, largely residential area, this establishment isn’t like its neighbors. A pair of tourists and their Japanese guide coast along on bicycles. “This is the original headquarters of the video game company Nintendo,” the guide says in English as they slow down next to me. His clients express delight — they’d never have known if he hadn’t pointed it out.
I’ve come to visit the Marufukuro, an 18-room luxury hotel housed in the former Nintendo offices that once included the apartment home of the company’s founding Yamauchi family. It opened in April 2022 after a careful renovation by Plan Do See, a well-established Japanese hospitality firm that specializes in wedding venues and historically significant projects; after winning the bid for the project, Plan Do See got iconic architect Tadao Ando to design the hotel, and the top-tier Marufukuro suite — where guests can observe Ando’s hand-signed autograph in pencil on part of a wall — can go for over $1,300 a night.
Photo: Marufukuro
The Marufukuro, despite being the birthplace of Nintendo, has no current relationship with the company — I’m repeatedly reminded about the importance of this distinction, which is funny, because Nintendo history is the main reason I was drawn here in the first place. The Yamauchi family sold its Nintendo shares back in 2014. The hotel is now owned by the No. 10 Family Office — a company created by Banjo Yamauchi in 2020 to reportedly “preserve the ‘unique creativity and pioneering mindset’ of [Nintendo’s third president] Hiroshi Yamauchi, who died in 2013, [and] to help Japan innovate.” Banjo is the biological grandson (and adopted son) of Hiroshi Yamauchi; the latter was responsible for Nintendo’s shift to video games, including its early work with experimental toys. After Hiroshi’s death, then-21-year-old Banjo received an “enormous inheritance.” By all appearances, No. 10 doesn’t have anything to do with game development — it’s an investment firm that oversaw a fortune of over 100 billion yen in 2021; family offices are typically set up to handle investments and wealth management for ultra-rich “high net worth” families, often with a focus on dynastic responsibilities. The hotel name comes from another Yamauchi card company, Marufuku, with the -ro added to denote a luxury building, and Plan Do See runs the hotel operations.
Photo: Alexis Ong
“Since 1889, [Nintendo] have been keeping the same attitude of pushing boundaries, even though they had faced management crisis and the threat of bankruptcy several times in their history,” says Banjo Yamauchi via email. “This building represents [the] tough history of Nintendo.” According to Yamauchi, the idea to convert the building was mainly for historical preservation, and many of its original architectural features, like its Showa-era-style roof, have been kept. To the north is the oldest building, where I’ll be staying for the next three nights. It began 100 years ago as a warehouse before three more additions were made, including the new Ando annex. My section of the hotel is a three-floor walkup with an old-school non-functional cage-style elevator; my red-carpeted room is large and airy with a high, partly vaulted ceiling and a checkerboard-tile balcony overlooking the river. I am delighted for the first time in years to receive a large old brass key, rather than an electronic room card. On my second morning there, I wake to a light dusting of snow.
In 1959, the company moved to a bigger location, and the whole compound sat unused and empty. Iku Hasegawa, who works at the hotel and represents Plan Do See, explains that most of the buildings were already well preserved. “There was one worker from Nintendo who would come every month to open the windows and the doors to air everything out, and make sure everything was OK,” she explains. Patrick Okada, managing director of No. 10’s business incubation office, happens to be visiting the hotel with his family during my stay, and tells me later, via email, that Nintendo “fans” visited the building during its long vacant period, taking photos and leaving signatures.
Today, its guests are a mix of Japanese regional visitors and, more recently, since Japan lifted travel restrictions around November 2022, international arrivals like myself (and according to staff, a few from the American military base in Okinawa). Some are architecture buffs who come to see Ando’s work; others are foodies keen to visit the hotel restaurant, Carta, helmed by Japanese chef Ai Hosokawa. It is around Hosokawa’s very photogenic meals (all three are provided in the room rate per day) that I get to observe fellow guests in the communal dining room: several mother-and-daughter combos, young families, quiet couples, and a small, excited friend group. During my stay, I seem to be the only foreign guest.
In learning more about the neighborhood, I begin to suspect that the Marufukuro’s presence might be the beginning of a long-term plan. “They were able to beautify the area by cleaning the river around here,” Hasegawa says. “[Gojo] is a historical area, so they wanted to make it more beautiful and for more people, especially artists, to come here.” I am told that the (very good) coffee shop around the corner, murmur coffee, occupies a building owned by one of the Yamauchi daughters (it also provides the hotel with its own Marufuku roast, stocked in each guest room). According to Hasegawa, the Marufukuro’s revitalization went hand in hand with encouraging creative interest in the neighborhood; wandering around the area yields no real sign of this intended outcome, at least not yet, given that half of the hotel’s existence has taken place under pandemic restrictions. If the Marufukuro is meant to function as a sort of historical and cultural beacon, it’s doing so in a sphere where it already has real estate influence; besides the storied past of the physical buildings, it is a business that leans toward the history and influence of the Yamauchi family more so than the modern video game company we know today.
Photo: Marufukuro
The most visibly game-related space in the hotel is its small library, curated by Banjo Yamauchi with help from Japanese book company Bach; there’s also an interactive “toy library” by artist Daito Manabe and an installation by Rhizomatiks, a creative collective that has worked on game-like projects with ex-Sega legend Tetsuya Mizuguchi. This is the only part of the hotel directly operated by the No. 10 office, and only hotel guests are allowed to use it. I was half hoping for a special archive, but this isn’t that sort of library. It’s more of an elegant reading lounge with a reflective “infinity” ceiling, inspired by Yamauchi’s love of the film Interstellar; there’s a bar where guests are welcome to make their own drinks, reinforcing the sense that we’re all in a very nice house rather than a hotel.
Unlike most libraries, the Marufukuro allows you to bring that expensive glass of whiskey into the library proper, to sit, read, and drink. It houses high-end design books that run the gamut from modernist art philosophy to Damien Hirst, interspersed with Nintendo-themed art objects commissioned by Yamauchi (think: a frosted glass Game Boy, or a Switch designed to look like an underwater relic covered in algae). There are a few historical Nintendo treats on display, like an original red-trimmed Famicom console and, to my excitement, a Light Telephone from 1971. The latter was a novelty gadget designed by Gunpei Yokoi to let people communicate through light sensors, and resembles an enormously clunky mega flashlight. I ask if we’re allowed to use the consoles on display, or if the hotel has an arsenal of Nintendo products that can be loaned to guests. Hasegawa explains that the hotel’s gaming consoles aren’t allowed in rooms, so as not to encourage gambling.
A handful of books are Nintendo-specific, including Osamu Inoue’s The Philosophy of Nintendo, and Erik Voskuil’s Before Mario, which documents obscure Nintendo toys. My favorite, though, was the companion book to the 2003 “Family Computer’’ exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, filled with short essays, Famicom games, and interviews with Shigeru Miyamoto and copywriter Shigesato Itoi, who coined the phrase “no crying until the end” in Mother. (There’s also an interview with a young Hideo Kojima.)
Photo: Alexis Ong
My time at the Marufukuro — a pleasant luxuriation in excellent Japanese hospitality — was not the experience I’d envisioned when I’d first learned of its existence. As a vacation, it’s a niche historical landmark exuding warmth and luxury, and makes for a memorable splurge. It is easiest to describe it offhandedly as “the Nintendo hotel,” though there’s nothing outwardly Nintendo about it — more of a low-key look at the legacy of the Yamauchi family and its endeavors to use its resources to “return the inherited material and spiritual wealth to the public.” I think about the murmur coffee shop and wonder how much of the land and buildings around this neighborhood are owned by the Yamauchis. If the Marufukuro’s long-term goal is to breathe new life into the area without disrupting the residents, then openly invoking the Nintendo name would probably cultivate a louder, brasher sort of tourism that doesn’t really jibe with Plan Do See’s understated brand of hoteliering or No. 10’s purported goals of philanthropy and giving back to Japanese society.
The separation between No. 10 (and the Marufukuro) and Nintendo is understandable, since the Yamauchis sold off most of their shares in the latter nearly 10 years ago. But if there is a social responsibility angle to the former’s mission, it feels sadly in conflict with the latter’s longtime crackdowns on piracy and ROM emulation that have become bastions of game preservation in a precarious digital-only world. If No. 10 wants to adopt the Nintendo approach to innovation and excitement in its own projects, it will hopefully do so with the awareness that bringing new forms of socially minded creativity into the world should also include long-term plans to maintain these projects; in a modern context, it is impossible to discuss the impact and legacy of Nintendo — one of the most beloved entertainment brands in the world — without recognizing its failure to preserve its own work for current and future generations. Even while I’m constantly reminded that the Marufukuro and Nintendo are operationally disconnected entities, it’s hard to think of one without the other in a broader historical context — I leave wondering who will preserve Nintendo’s work in the same careful way.
Choosing the best ship in Starfield is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. It’s not just your means of fast travel through the Milky Way. It’s everything from your storage locker to your crew’s quarters to the thing that protects you from space pirates. Your ship, in other words, is your home.
It’s nigh impossible to get the single best ship in Starfield early on, thanks to prohibitively expensive sticker prices. Bear in mind, too, that to pilot ships higher than class A, you’ll need to invest points in the Piloting skill (which requires destroying enemy ships, which itself requires a better ship).
Still, in short order, you’ll get plenty of money and skill points in Starfield, which should soon open up your options. Without further ado, these are the best ships in Starfield, including the best class C ship, the best free ship, and the best ship to buy.
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Complete the “Mantis” side quest Cost: Free
Fairly early into your playthrough, you will likely pick up a note titled “Secret Outpost!” from a dead Spacer. I found it during the mission “The Old Neighborhood,” while searching for the whereabouts of Vanguard Moara. Head to the Secret Outpost on Denebola I-b, and you’ll begin a quest titled “Mantis.”
Spoilers aside, as it is one of the best side quests in Starfield, you’re rewarded with some immensely powerful armor, along with the Razorleaf — one of the best class A ships in the game for anyone who is a fairly low level. It has a cargo hold with room for 420kg of stuff, so a slight downgrade on the 495 offered by the Frontier, but with almost triple the fuel and 100 higher hull protection, along with more powerful weapons, it’s a no-brainer. Especially since it has a shielded cargo hold with a capacity of 160, essential for smuggling contraband.
Best free ship: Kepler R
How to get it: Complete the “Overdesigned” side quest Cost: Free
After the “Starborn” main mission, linger around Constellation headquarters and talk to Walter. You’ll get the “Overdesigned” side quest, which sends you to the Stroud-Eklund offices to consult the company’s staffers on designing its new spaceship. Instinct would suggest you pick and choose ideas based on what you think would be best in a ship. Don’t do that. Instead, affirm literally everyone’s ideas. That will reward you with the best free ship in the game. (Consult our video walkthrough above for the detailed quest steps to “Overdesigned.”)
If you do it right, you’ll get the Kepler R — a class C ship with truly bonkers stats: six crew, 28 LY jump range, 805 shield power, 3,500 cargo capacity, and some pretty solid weapons to boot. Yes, the Kepler R is ridiculous-looking and, no, it would never in a million years sell on a legitimate spaceship market. But with stats like these and a price point of 0 credits, who cares about aesthetics?
Best class A ship: Wanderwell
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Select the Kid Stuff trait Cost: Free
If you chose the Kid Stuff trait, your parents will be alive in the game and you can visit them, in exchange for 2% of your credits every week to support them (though that is capped at 500 each time). Give it enough time and, eventually, your dad will gift you the class A Wanderwell ship that he won while… gambling. Guess that’s what the cash you send home to help the family is going toward!
On the plus side, while it doesn’t have any Shielded Cargo like the Razorleaf, the Wanderwell does have a cargo capacity of 880, making it perfect for carrying all the resources you need to complete side missions. It only comes with two weapons by default rather than the standard three, so you’ll need to fork out a little to get it fully equipped, but with a jump range of 27 LY, it’s the next best upgrade after the Razorleaf.
Best class B ship: Shieldbreaker
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from New Atlantis Ship Services Technician Cost: 265,443 credits
This class B bad boy costs a fair whack, but if you’ve prioritized both main story and faction affiliation missions (both of which pay more than most side quests) and sold literally everything you’ve seen, you probably have enough credits in the bank for the Shieldbreaker. Once you turn your attention to side activities, such as destroying the Crimson Fleet and hauling thousands of resources across the galaxy, this ship can do it all.
With a crew size of five and a cargo capacity of 2,280 (none of it shielded though, unfortunately), there’s a lot of room here. Living up to its name, it also has relatively powerful weapons, and comes with laser that automatically target enemy ships.
Best class C ship: Silent Runner
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from HopeTech HQ Cost: 390,150 credits
Want to become a full time hauler? Look no further than the Silent Runner, a class C ship that’s essentially the Shieldbreaker’s older brother. While the Shieldbreaker is pretty good in combat, the Silent Runner is all about the cargo, with a whopping 6,060 cargo space. You can upgrade it further with weaponry of course, but this is the one to go for if you want to become a space trucker.
On top of the cargo space, it can grav jump up to 29 LY and has 1,164 hull, which is more than enough to hold off any Crimson Fleet or House Va’ruun members that come a-knocking. It’s also got 300 fuel capacity, which will get you almost anywhere in the charted galaxy.
Best ship for carrying cargo: Vanquisher
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from Stroud-Eklund Showroom in Neon Cost: 335,655 credits
The Vanquisher is a solid class C all-rounder, with 4,120 cargo capacity, 1,100 fuel, and 908 hull. Where it especially shines is its missiles, which do 149 damage, along with its 730 shield. It leaves room to be desired (read: upgraded) in the other weapon categories, but when your missiles are dealing that much damage, it doesn’t matter too much. It also may not be the most aesthetically pleasing ship, but at the end of the day, you’ll mainly be looking at the interior anyway.
Best ship for combat: Abyss Trekker
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from Ship Services Technician in Paradiso Cost: 347,230 credits
The Abyss Trekker is another class C ship that is by far your best bet if you plan on getting into plenty of dogfights in space. You won’t be carrying much loot with this as it only has 340 cargo capacity, but you will be able to take down any opponents you encounter thanks to the 100 missiles and 170 ballistics stats.
With a shield of 850 and hull of 1,031, it’ll take a lot to get this cyan-white ship out of the skies, but if you do need to get away, it has 950 fuel and can grav jump up to 25 LY.
Best ship to buy: Narwhal
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from Taiyo Astroneering in Neon Cost: 432,620 credits
The Narwhal is arguably the best — and certainly one of the most expensive — ship in the entire game. Setting you back more than 400,000 credits, this class C blue beast is incredibly well-rounded and can jump up to 30 LY, so you can go wherever you like. It can have up to seven crew members aboard, has 560 fuel, 2,118 hull, and 1,760 cargo capacity.
As a result, it does the job for hauling lots of materials (though isn’t the best for that), but if you want one ship to do as much as possible rather than switching between ships depending on what the current task is, the Narwhal is for you. Special shout out to its 114 ballistics and 82 missiles too, as they pack a serious punch.
[Ed. note: Spoilers follow for the ending of Starfield.]
Best New Game Plus ship: Starborn Guardian
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Start New Game Plus Cost: Free
Minor spoiler warning for New Game Plus here, so if you want to go in without any knowledge at all, you’re safe to stop reading and go for one of the other ships in this guide. However, once you do finish the game, New Game Plus will reward you with the Starborn Guardian, a class A ship that cannot be bought or stolen during your first playthrough.
The Starborn Guardian is one of the fastest pre-made ships in the game, can grav jump up to 30 LY away, and has two unique weapons in the Solar Flare Beam and Gravity Torpedo. With a cargo capacity of 950 and a hull of 649, it’s one of the best ships in the entire game, especially since you earn an upgraded one each time you start new game plus again. Plus it looks incredible — you can’t create anything like this in the ship builder.
Despite the history-changing implications of battles on Endor and Yavin, the nature of war, especially within the Star Wars universe, is one of countless skirmishes across the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Unlikely heroes and allies come together to fight on land and in space, accruing small advantages along the way to inch toward their versions of victory. The same will be true for Star Wars: Unlimited, the newest entry into the hotly contested battle for players in the world of trading card games.
Its seventh project based on the Star Warsuniverse, Fantasy Flight Games’ latest effort combines time-tested elements from its past ventures, along with inspiration from other popular TCGs, to make Unlimited its most dynamic version of a galactic battle yet.
“We’re trying to go in a bit of a new direction with this game in terms of streamlining things and making a really fast back-and-forth game, compared to some of our past games,” said Danny Schaefer, a designer at Fantasy Flight, in an interview with Polygon.“We definitely picked up some elements from our past [living card games] as well as some of the older Star Wars games, as well.”
One of Unlimited’sdesigners, Jeremy Zwirn, also worked on FFG’s previous Star Wars: Destiny dice and card game, which utilized a fast-paced tit-for-tat action system, and helped port that to the rules and vision for Unlimited.
An early demo of Star Wars: Unlimited was held at Gen Con 2023.Photo: Fantasy Flight Games/Asmodee
“The turn structure is very quick, very interactive, and simplified,” Zwirn explained. “You don’t have something like the stack in Magic with confusing timing issues when things are happening. That worked really well in Destiny, so we wanted to carry that over to this game too.”
Another one of the game’s fundamental characteristics was borrowed from a different body of work altogether. Like many trading card games, Unlimited cards have a cost that must be paid in order to play them from your hand. But unlike Magic: The Gathering,which requires adding specific land cards that generate mana, Unlimited’sresource system is closer to Disney Lorcanaand Flesh and Blood’sapproach, games that allow you to use almost any card in hand as a potential resource.
“The Call of Cthulhu LCG had a somewhat similar resource system where essentially any card could be used as a resource,” Zwirn explained. “You resource one card per round, so you can eventually build up, get more powerful cards, and play them at a higher cost.”
As these varied inspirations gradually came together over more than three years of design, they eventually paved the way for more defining elements that the game’s creators introduced to make Unlimited exciting, replayable, and, in its own way, challenging.
Deck-building dynamics
Central to deck design are the game’s heroes and bases, which start on the board at the beginning of every game.
Similar to Flesh and Blood or Magic’sCommander format, Unlimited utilizes iconic Star Wars characters to serve as a deck’s primary hero. These include the likes of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Chewbacca, and plenty others. Likewise, base cards depict classic locations from Star Warsstories, from the swamps of Dagobah to the Death Star Command Center and even the Catacombs of Cadera on Jedha.
The heroes provide several important contributions to each deck. For one, they have built-in abilities that impact the game in a variety of ways. These heroes can also serve as units that do battle more directly with opponents. But most importantly, heroes and bases feature colored “aspects.”
Unlimited utilizes six different “aspects” that determine the play style and possible abilities of the game’s cards. Think of them like colors in Magic,the Pokémon TCG, Hearthstone,and countless other card games.
In Unlimited,the aspects are Vigilance (blue), Command (green), Aggression (red), Cunning (yellow), Heroism (white), and Villainy (black). An Unlimited deck must have a leader and a base — your leader then provides up to two aspect icons while your base provides one. Together, the aspects that your base and hero feature then shape the cards the rest of your deck can include.
“All those permutations of mix-and-matching a leader with different bases and different aspects can create an entirely new deck,” Zwirn emphasized. “Sometimes those bases can really make or break a deck, as well.”
To highlight the basic look and structure of Unlimited’sfuture decks, the design team shared a few examples that feature different leaders and bases, along with some of the cards that play well with those configurations. Zwirn points to the Cunning and Villainy Boba Fett deck as one example of the importance of maximizing heroes and bases to get the most value and synergy out of the remaining cards in the deck.
A deck by Jeremy Zwirn based on the hero Boba Fett, with his base set in Jedha City.Image: Fantasy Flight Games
“For the Boba deck, the card Cunning is an extremely powerful card that has double Cunning aspects. So to play it for only four [resources], you have to have a base and leader with Cunning aspects, which is gaining you tempo,” Zwird explained. “And the card itself creates probably the best tempo in the entire game; it can exhaust two units and bounce an enemy unit, all for four resources.”
When you break down these aspects further, you begin to see how they express the game’s play styles and color identities into classic card game archetypes.
“There are some very good aggro decks, especially on the hero side. Some very good control decks, especially on the villain side. And there are a variety of midrange decks somewhere in between,” Schaefer said.
However, don’t expect to see breakout combo decks when the game first hits shelves in 2024.
“We’re intentionally not leaning hard into combo, with the first set at least,” said Tyler Parrott, another designer on Unlimited. “There will be some combos eventually, inevitably.”
“There are combo elements to decks, but not really like ‘we’re going to kill you in one turn’ or infinite loops,” Schaefer added.
A deck by Danny Schaefer based on the hero Han Solo, with his base set to Catacombs of Cadera — also on Jedha.Image: Fantasy Flight Games
“The Han Solo deck is about as close to combo as you’ll get in Set One, with the ability to cheat out expensive cards a little bit ahead of time,” Schaefer explained. “It’s playing You’re My Only Hope with all the cards that look at the top of your deck. It’s not like a one turn kill combo, it’s more like I got my seven drop out on turn five, or my five drop out on turn three.”
Another intriguing aspect of Star Wars: Unlimited lies in its deck-building mechanics. Decks must be a minimum of 50 cards, with a limit to only three copies of any one card.
“It’s a bit less consistent than if you have four-ofs, obviously,” Schaefer said. “That was partially because you see so much of your deck in a given game, we didn’t want it to be quite as easy to always see your same cards over and over — especially in the first few turns.”
According to Parrott,50 cards is “also just a value that we’re familiar with. We have enough other games that have been 50 with three copies that we knew exactly what that was going to play like mathematically.”
Arenas of battle
One of the most unique elements to Unlimited, which fans of Star Warswill surely recognize as a recurring theme across the films and stories, are battles that occupy both land and space.
Unlimited features two arenas of play, ground and space, which are then occupied by respective units.
“One of the things we learned from the Star Wars LCG, it bounced off a lot of people for thematic reasons because the idea that Chewbacca could fight a Star Destroyer was a little bit too much of a stretch,” Parrott explained. “That was one of the big incentives to have the two lanes be separate.
Danny Schaefer’s Chewbacca deck finds its home on Hoth, naturally: “Chewy’s ability lets you play three drops or smaller and give them Sentinel, which means they have to be attacked. It’s really good for slowing the game down and stopping your aggro opponents from hitting your base. And the idea here is you play those cheap units early, stall things out a little bit, and then eventually either build up to some ramp or some removal, keep the game under control, then get to seven resources and bring out Chewy, who when he flips is a giant monster. He has Sentinel and he has Grit, which means his power goes up for each damage he takes. So once Chewy flips, it just locks down the ground and threatens to hit really hard. You’ve also got a couple eight drops in here for once you’ve gotten to that point, you can slam the door shut with your giant capital ships.”Image: Fantasy Flight Games
However, not only does this element make the flavor of Unlimited more authentic to its source material, it also adds an important strategic element too.
“Bringing the correct ratio of ground to space units is going to matter a lot,” Parrott said. “If you go to a tournament and you expect the metagame to be heavy on people playing space aggro, then now I need to add more space units to my deck to fight against the space units, and now my ground units maybe can be fewer and they’ll go farther in the game because that is now the uncontested lane.”
Play modes and organized play
Looking ahead, Star Wars: Unlimited will feature a variety of play modes, including 1v1 and multiplayer, where players bring pre-built or fine-tuned decks to battle at stores or other casual environments.
The game will also feature draft and sealed modes, where players can open a specified number of card packs to construct a brand-new deck on the spot.
Eventually, Unlimited will also introduce its own system of organized play spanning from weekly store events to galactic championships, though more details on the specifics behind organized play are coming down the line.
Star Wars: Unlimited launches in game stores globally on March 8, 2024.
CD Projekt Red fulfilled a five-year promise last week when it added a fully functional metro system to Cyberpunk 2077. While the feature does wonders to make Night City feel more alive, I was surprised to learn just how little California’s public transportation infrastructure has improved in the game’s alternate-reality future.
Cyberpunk 2077 now includes five Night City Area Rapid Transit (NCART) rail lines servicing 19 stations. Every stop still functions as a fast travel point, but players can also use them to hop onto the subway and relocate, in real time, to other parts of the city. As movement is restricted while on the train, this is a mostly visual experience, providing folks with a new perspective on the sprawling mega-city as well as limited opportunities to chat with their fellow riders.
During one trip, I noticed a screen indicating the train’s speed was consistently hovering around 43 mph, which felt awfully slow for futuristic transportation. The average speeds of modern-day heavy-rail systems in the United States range from the high teens to the mid-30s, but they’re capable of reaching much higher maximums. And that’s not even accounting for more developed public transportation in Japan and China, whose magnetic levitation (maglev) bullet trains zoom through major cities at hundreds of miles per hour.
What the heck.Image: CD Projekt Red
This fits with what the first Cyberpunk rulebook had to say about then-future transportation in 1988:
Surprise, surprise. Contrary to expectations, the year 2000 has not yielded any staggering new developments in transportation. Years of economic strife and civil unrest have discouraged research into new ways to travel—in fact, the very act of travel has become very restricted. Expect the world of 2013 to be much like the 20th century—a network of crowded freeways, packed trains, and swarming airports.
A subsequent expansion, Welcome to Night City, indicates light-rail maglev trains with ground speeds of 200 mph existed in the eponymous metropolis as far back as 2013, the year the first Cyberpunk adventures were set. Every book since makes some mention maglev trains as a staple of Night City travel, and 2005’s Cyberpunk V3.0 even noted an improvement in their top speed to 300 mph despite the apparent destruction of the intercontinental maglev line during the Fourth Corporate War (which took place from 2021 to 2025 in-universe) between the world’s ruling megacorps.
(And just to cover my ass, 1990’s updated Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook makes it clear that NCART and the light-rail maglev trains are one and the same.)
It’s here that Cyberpunk 2077 does something clever by expanding the consequences of this conflict. Rather than only putting rail travel between continents in flux, the game describes the Fourth Corporate War as debilitating the entire maglev system, as explained by the following database entry:
Maglev trains cruised at high speeds via tunnels and on the surface thanks to the advent of electrodynamic suspension technology, allowing fast and comfortable travel from Night City to other cities, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Atlanta and Washington D.C. Unfortunately, this new era of transportation didn’t last long. The social unrest and armed conflict of the 4th Corporate War brought with it an economic crisis that soon crippled the entire system. Currently inoperational, the abandoned Maglev tunnels are used by the homeless and various gangs.
The destruction of the maglev system and the slow NCART speeds exhibited in-game lead me to assume the local government was forced to revert to pre-2013 tech to ensure NCART remained operational, a massive downgrade from the bullet trains that once transported residents through Night City and beyond.
Hurry up and wait.Image: CD Projekt Red
While researching this situation, I couldn’t help but see darkly hilarious parallels between the difficulties facing the fictional California depicted in Cyberpunk 2077 and the actual state in which I live.
Despite being one of the largest (both in terms of land and population) and richest states in the union, California has long struggled with plans to build public transportation on par with the bullet trains of eastern Asia. A lot of that is due to politics, as even ostensibly supportive legislators are wary of spending the billions of dollars necessary to complete the project. And let’s face it: Americans are just way too devoted to their cars.
All that said, there’s one very simple explanation for Night City metro’s relatively low speed: The developers didn’t want NCART rides to happen in the blink of an eye. What good would the long-awaited subway experience be if players didn’t actually, you know, experience it?
A trip taken at 300 mph wouldn’t provide any time to people watch Night City’s eccentric residents or take in the view of skyscrapers surrounding the bay outside the train’s windows. The entire point of the subway system — and a big part of why folks clamored for its inclusion all these years — is to give players new opportunities to role-play and experience the visual splendor of Cyberpunk 2077’s setting and its over-the-top aesthetics.
I find it hard to fault CD Projekt Red for playing a little loose with established Cyberpunk history if it makes for a better game in the end.
The best seeds in Lego Fortnite offer everything from rich resource deposits and exploration areas to easy access for early biomes. But if the possibilities are endless — and they essentially are — where do you start?
In our Lego Fortnite guide, we’ll show you the best seeds in Lego Fortnite, plus explain how to start a game on one of those seeds.
What are Lego Fortnite seeds?
A “seed” is the method of identifying a particular Lego Fortnite map. There are tons of player-generated and -created maps out there, each one different from the rest, and that figure is only going to get bigger as Lego Fortnite’s popularity grows. Seeds are paramount for identifying maps.
Whenever you’re in a Lego Fortnite map or realm, you can see the seed by looking directly at the bottom of the screen, where you’ll see the seed details in low-opacity text. In the screenshot just below for example, the seed is the string of numbers to the left, while your individual location on the particular map is the string of numbers to the right.
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
Additionally, you can manually set a seed combination when you’re first establishing your own map. When creating a map from the Lego Fortnite home screen, click on the option to “override” the world seed, and you can enter any combination of numbers you want, as long as that number hasn’t previously been taken by another user.
How to enter a Lego Fortnite seed
If you want to visit an existing Lego Fortnite seed, there are a few steps you need to take. Below, we’ve listed them out:
Access Lego Fortnite’s main menu
Press up on the D-pad to select a World
Click on “Create New World”
Click on either “New World Slot,” or save over an existing world in the list
Click on “Override World Seed” under the “Advanced Options” menu
Enter the seed code
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
The best seeds in Lego Fortnite
Before, we’ve listed our picks for the best Lego Fortnite seeds.
It’s important to mention here that we’re judging them by the resources they offer up, and the access they provide to other biomes like the desert and ice areas early on. It’s these factors that really dictate which map seeds stand out from the crowd.
If you’re specifically looking to find caves, every single Lego Fortnite world will always offer up at least some. Some, however, will hide their caves out of sight, or potentially even further away from the spawn point, meaning you’ve got a bigger trek to reach the caves for some quick resources. Our guide on where to find caves can show you some of the best seeds that have caves near the start.
Here are the best seeds in Lego Fortnite:
Best seed for beginners: 14191128
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
This is a really solid seed to head straight to if you’re after a starting area with all the resources you need early on in Lego Fortnite, including wood, granite, berries, pumpkins, and much more.
Best seed for easy resources: 0942418202
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
This seed, as discovered by content creator AciDic Blitzz, is a veritable treasure trove of very quick resources. Not only is there a cave immediately north of the spawn point, which can offer up knotroot and other rare resources, but there’s a house even further north, and a whole town to the northeast, both of which feature chests for more resources.
Best seed for chests: 542354756
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
Here’s a neat seed if you’re after some chests. From the spawn point, follow the map northwest, and you’ll see a watchtower. This tower contains two chests, and from the top floor, you’ll easily be able to see a house just a short distance away, which also happens to contain two chests.
Best seed for new biomes: 1264970744
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
As proclaimed by Ouranked on YouTube, this seed is great because it features the desert and ice biomes on opposite sides of the spawn point. Keep this map seed in mind if you need to go and rapidly grab any gear or crafting items that can only spawn in either of the biomes.
Best seed for exploration: 1820364159
Image: Epic Games via Polygon
As captured by 1brecci on TikTok, when you spawn into this map, head to the west immediately. Once you’re across the lake, you’ll find several ruined buildings ripe for exploration, and if you keep heading west along the border of the desert biome, you’ll find a watchtower complete with a chest for looting.
Fandom might be something people participate in during their spare time, maybe in the privacy of online communities or convention halls, but it undoubtedly has an impact on the wider world. In the past few years, the types of strategies deployed by politicians and those leading social movements have increasingly started to look like those used in fandom. This is particularly true of tactics pioneered within the digital and physical fan spaces in order to increase visibility and impact. All the while, fandom itself is continuing to change and evolve.
Powered by passion, fans make things happen. Sometimes those accomplishments are only important within each individual fandom — producing a zine, making a character or celebrity trend, starting a new meme. But other times they reach further than expected, outside fan spaces, and make things really move.
Taking a look at the accomplishments of fandom communities this year is a good way to get a bird’s-eye view of what exactly fandom is, at a time when more people engage in fandom than ever. In 2023, fans showed up and made their voices heard. They launched projects, saved shows, supported strikes, and even rescued historical figures from obscurity. Here are just a few of fandom’s most impressive accomplishments from this year.
Fans on strike
When the Writers Guild of America announced that its members would be going on strike in May of this year, fans took the news in stride. Of course, it was disappointing to hear that production on many fan-favorite shows, like Stranger Things,would be pausing thanks to the strike action. But it was more important that fans supported the actions of the WGA, and later SAG-AFTRA, which were necessary for writers and actors to earn protections and fair wages in their industry.
Though some troll posts led people to believe that fans were against the strike, that couldn’t have been more untrue. It was precisely the opposite: Fans worked hard to spread information about how best to support the striking writers and actors. Independent, fan-run blogs like sagwgastrikeupdates and fans4wga consistently communicated the latest news on the strikes and answered questions about how best to avoid crossing the picket line with fan activity.
And while some fans were sad that shows that came out during the strike, like fan favorites Good Omensand Our Flag Means Death, never got traditional actor- and writer-centric press tours that fans could obsess over alongside the new episodes, fans put their feelings aside in support of fairness. OFMD fans showed up in person to picket lines and were rewarded, when the strike ended, with a deluge of behind-the-scenes content that stars like Vico Ortiz and Leslie Jones shared on TikTok.
A plaque for Hester Leggatt
West End comedy musical Operation Mincemeat has fostered a fandom of Mincefluencers ever since its off-West End days at Riverside Studios. It’s an oddball show, which, much like the Broadway hit Six,was written and developed by a company of Fringe Festival stalwarts.And like Six it was also inspired by real history. Like the Colin Firth film of the same name (which it otherwise shares no connection with) Operation Mincemeat was inspired by real events during World War II, when a group of MI5 operatives successfully diverted the Nazis by planting false information on a corpse.
The musical’s main characters are based on real historical figures, including Hester Leggatt, a secretary at MI5. She contributed to the wartime operation by helping create the false identity of the corpse, writing love letters to “Bill Martin” that were planted on the body. In the musical this work is immortalized in the tearjerker song “Dear Bill.” In the song “Useful,” Hester thinks that instead of a statue she might like to be recognized by “just a small plaque / Something tasteful and small.”
Something special is happening, folks!!!
On Monday 11th Dec, a plaque in Hester Leggatt’s honour will be unveiled following the dedicated research of some incredible fans!
You’ll be able to view the plaque unveiling from the entrance to the theatre. pic.twitter.com/6SPWsWoRLb
Unlike the male protagonists of the story, about whom biographical details abound, little was known about the real Hester Leggatt — just enough to create her character in the musical. But fans went much, much further, digging up biographical records at the National Archives and London’s Imperial War Museum in order to illuminate details of Leggatt’s life. Fans found census records, exam results, and handwriting samples that matched the real letter to “Bill.”
Finally, their research culminated in a letter from MI5 confirming Legatt’s employment, which had been classified information up until then. A plaque honoring Leggatt is set to be unveiled outside the Fortune Theater, where Operation Mincemeat is playing, on Dec. 11. Hester Leggatt is finally getting the recognition she long deserved, thanks to fans’ hard work uncovering her story.
Save the sapphic show
Fan campaigns aren’t new, but their persistence year after year is a demonstration not only of fans’ ability to self-organize and persevere, but the continued divergence of studios, networks, and streaming platform priorities from the desires of passionate fan communities. In 2023, the shows that fans rallied behind included animated show Star Trek: Prodigy and the CW’s Supernatural prequel The Winchesters. But the most notable fan campaigns have been behind the canceled shows A League of Their Own and Warrior Nun.
Passionate fans hungry for queer representation have helped rescue shows like Sense8; fans have also banded together to campaign for The 100 to change certain plotlines. A League of Their Own was renewed only to be un-renewed by Amazon in August of this year, and fans immediately started organizing, seeing that it was worth the effort to push back against this cavalier treatment. Fan campaigners behind accounts like @ALOTOHomeRun have kept the show trending, hoping for a second season that will continue to explore the queer and Black characters that made the show a powerful adaptation of the original 1992 film. They have kept the show trending on X (formerly Twitter), and in return the showrunners have promised that they’re still trying to find a way forward for the show.
Fans’ impressive show of support for Warrior Nun began late last year, when Netflix confirmed the beloved drama about an ass-kicking nun (played by Alba Baptista) would not return for a third season. After creating a Discord server called Sapphics in Pain, the fans began to organize — and didn’t stop. Well into 2023, they were spending hours of volunteer labor on professional-level analytics research papers and strategic analysis, aiming to prove conclusively to network stakeholders that their beloved show was well worth picking up for a new season. Their hard work was rewarded when executive producer Dean English announced the series would return as a trilogy of feature films — though, because of the lack of involvement of the original series’ writers, it’s a cautious victory for the hardworking fans.
Swifties united
Photo: Daniel Knighton/Getty Images
Thanks to the kickoff of the ubiquitous Eras Tour, and the steady (re)releases of Taylor’s Version albums, Swifties consolidated their power and emerged as an unshakeable and unstoppable bloc in 2023. Swifties are behind trends like trading friendship bracelets and wearing glittery boots, but there’s more to it than aesthetics — the huge community of Taylor Swift’s die-hard fans have also used their influence to attempt to create visible change and move the needle on issues that are important to them.
In early November, Swifties in Argentina spoke out against the right-wing political candidate Javier Milei, forming a group called “Swifties Against Freedom Advances” to try and convince other fans not to vote for him. However, in the end it wasn’t enough to move the needle, and he ended up winning.
Other Swifty fan efforts in South America are ongoing. A fan, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, died at one of Swift’s Brazilian shows during an extreme heat wave. Fan outcry after this event was widespread, but American-language media was slow to report on the incident beyond Swift’s initial statement about the tragedy. Fans rose to the occasion in order to translate Brazilian news stories regarding the timeline of events and venue issues, and even raised money for the family of the fan who passed. This culminated in Swift paying for the family to come from their rural home to see her concert, where they posed for a picture with her wearing shirts with Ana’s face on them.
Games Workshop retail staff have a rough job, from low pay to consistent unreasonable targets from upper management, so it’s with all the love and respect that I tell you about the animated lad that my 14-year-old friends and I used to make fun of for liberal use of the phrase “If a Space Marine walked in here right now…” It was always accompanied by wildly enthusiastic gesticulation meant to convey the absolute unit-tude of said Space Marines (8 feet tall in Warhammer 40,000’s lore). I bring this up because it perfectly sums up the thorny issue behind marketing these yoked stormtroopers: Space Marines are very expensive for something so small, forcing Games Workshop to make the legend of these tiny plastic soldiers tower over the reality.
And what a legend it is. The Horus Heresy book series currently consists of over 60 fat paperbacks worth of lore. There’s far too much nuance to unpack here, but it’s fair to say that when writers spend that long exploring something, they have to take it quite seriously, especially if they want to keep their readers hooked. To be clear, 40K is a fascinating, fun, creative, vast, and often extremely clever setting. But it’s also — at least as recently as 2021, according to its parent company — explicitly, intentionally satirizing the very faction that the vast majority of its lore seems so fascinated with. “Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be,” wrote the novelist Dawn Powell. As 40K grows and grows, it’s becoming more difficult to deny that the portrayal of the Imperium is at least somewhat aspirational.
Image: Owlcat Games via Polygon
A quick primer: Humanity’s overwhelming presence in the 40K setting takes the shape of the Imperium of Man, where staunch xenophobia, mindless zealotry, and outright hostility toward social or technological progress are among the highest virtues — a literal “cult of tradition”. Ordinary folk live in cramped “Hives,” toiling away until death, at which point they’re repurposed as tasty, nutritious “corpse starch.” The Imperial Guard, humanity’s most numerous military force, is best known for employing the Zapp Brannigan maneuver, i.e., throwing endless bodies at a problem until it sorts itself out. As such, individual human life is less than worthless. Terra’s more elite military are the Space Marines. As 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd is to law enforcement, so are the Space Marines to the concept of the Ubermensch — a grimly satirical warning about the pursuit of perceived physical perfection and ultimate strength.
Of the 36 playable factions in 40K, around half (17) are of the Imperium in some capacity, with a further nine being their direct foil in Chaos, leaving just 10 to split between the multiple nonhuman species that populate this mind-bogglingly huge universe. Sci-fi can vary wildly in flavor, but a unifying thread is that great science fiction is almost insatiably curious. 40K absolutely shines when it mocks the staunch anti-curiosity of its human protagonists. But as the company has gradually grown to value sales over artistic intent, that lack of curiosity too often seems to be adopted by Games Workshop itself.
Image: Owlcat Games via Polygon
This fantastic look at the timeline of 40K, and how it moved from satire to something almost resembling celebration, puts it like this: “As the setting grew more mainstream, Space Marines’ [portrayal] as noble warrior monks became more and more prominent, resulting in a world where these abused, intolerant, mass-murdering child soldiers are only ever portrayed from the Imperium’s point of view,” and, in the vast majority of official artwork, “as genuine heroes.” Even the official website categorizes nonhuman armies as “the Xenos threat.” Look a little closer, and it’s easy to see the inherent satire in images of Primarch Roboute Guilliman with a Christ-like halo of light shining from the background. But unless you know what you’re looking for, this stuff looks suspiciously like the very propaganda that it’s making fun of.
This isn’t to say, of course, that modern-day Games Workshop has lost its sense of satire, and most certainly not its sense of humor. As we’ve seen time and time again in the games industry, shareholders misunderstanding or just straight-up not valuing the creative process is a depressingly prevailing theme — it’s easy for nuance to get crushed under the pursuit of easy profitability. The rule of cool sells plastic, not difficult themes. Plus, 40K is a wargame. In a setting that requires constant conflict, factions that think in absolutes become necessary. But that’s where video games like the recent, excellent CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader come in. It’d be a massive anticlimax to end a game of 40K with a conversation before it even starts, but as the setting is allowed to spread its wings in a new genre, some of that classic satire begins to flourish again.
Image: Owlcat Games via Polygon
40K is, above all else, ridiculous, and Rogue Trader hasfun with it without losing any of the campy grindhouse stuff that grimdark excels at. Characters speak in rich, baroque prose, at once excellently written and almost indecipherable to anyone not already indoctrinated into their bizarre religious neo-feudalism. You don’t even have to leave your own ship to encounter dehumanizing class structure, and each of your erstwhile associates is comically nefarious enough to be the main villain in any other setting. In Baldur’s Gate 3, for example, the evil path requires a deliberate, long attempt to stray into monstrous territory. Here, you can have several crew members executed in the first few hours without breaking character.
Rogue Trader isn’t even the first game to pull this off recently. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, despite a rocky launch, is shaping up as an excellent successor to the Vermintide series, and portrays the horrific satire of existence in 40K’s horrendous hive cities masterfully. Loading screen quotes are such pointed satire you’d have to have accidentally super-glued your eyes shut building models to miss them, with lines like “A small mind is a tidy mind,” “Blessed are the intolerant,” and “Duty is vital, understanding is not.” It seemed only a few short years ago that the glut of Warhammer games felt like a punchline. Now, the scope and breadth these games offer are starting to feel like a better medium to portray the most complete version of 40K than the tabletop game itself.
Ahamkara Bones are the collectible for the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon in Destiny 2, and are an essential part of the “In the Shadow of the Mountain” quest.
In this Destiny 2 guide, we’ll go over how to find all of the sets of bones so you can complete the “In the Shadow of the Mountain” quest and the “Heed the Whispers, O Vengeance Mine” triumph, and boost the drop rate for your Buried Bloodlines Exotic sidearm.
If you’re having any trouble getting to the locations described herein, check out our guide on how to complete the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon in Destiny 2.
‘In the Shadow of the Mountain’ quest steps
Unlike previous dungeons, where you can get all of the collectibles in one run, the collectibles in Warlord’s Ruin must be collected across three different runs. Once you beat the dungeon for the first time, you’ll receive the “In the Shadow of the Mountain” quest, which will require you to get 30 Dark Ether Tinctures, 3 Blighted Wishing Glass, and four Ahamkara Bones.
How to get Dark Ether Tinctures in Destiny 2
You get Dark Ether Tinctures by killing special Screeb-like enemies called Thieving Wretches, which will spawn in three locations:
The first is on the bridge before the first encounter.
The second is found in the maze after defeating the first boss.
The third is found on the mountain side after defeating the second boss.
These enemies can respawn, so you can farm them to get enough Dark Ether Tinctures.
How to get Blighted Wishing Glass in Destiny 2
You get one Blighted Wishing Glass per encounter completion from the loot chest. Once you complete that quest step, you’ll have to collect the next 3 bones and more Dark Ether Tinctures and Blighted Wishing Glass. Once you complete that step, you’ll have to do it again until you collect all ten bones.
Ahamkara Bones 1 location
Across the bridge inside the first fort, before an arresting Knight assails you.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
The first set of Ahamkara Bones is found directly before the first boss. Once you enter the fort, continue forward. You’ll see a door where you must remove a corruption level one. Directly behind this door is the first set of bones.
Ahamkara Bones 2 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Across from imprisonment, after ascending through the ceiling.
After you escape the prison, continue forward until you jump through the ceiling into an orangely lit area. Walk forward, and the door blocked by corruption level one will be on your right. Remove the corruption and collect the second set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 3 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
At the top of the summit, face back from the cliff and find shelter.
After the second encounter, make your way until you reach the outside again and see this view. Continue to the left, and instead of jumping down to the left to make your way to the room with the large Taken orb, continue straight.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Climb up until you see a small hallway in the left wall of the mountain. The third corruption level one door will be in the small hallway, and behind that door will be the third set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 4 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
In the snowfallen maze, through the broken wall, seek the banner of Kings.
After you break out of the prison, make your way through until you reach a hole in the wall that you must walk through to progress.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Make a right (where you’ll have to jump over a stacked spike trap), then a left. The corruption level two door will be directly in front of you.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Remove the corruption and collect the fourth set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 5 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Cross into the Tempest, through the portcullis, at the sewer’s mouth.
Before the second encounter, get to the doorway where you find the first secret chest.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Turn to the right and follow the snowy path until you reach a sewer entrance. Right through the sewer grate is the next corruption level two door. Remove the corruption and collect the fifth set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 6 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
At summits base, find shelter off the beaten path. Too far, and the Taken will descend upon you.
After defeating the second boss, progress forward until you reach a group of enemies as you start to head outside. It’ll look like the area pictured above.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
After you defeat the enemies, head into the cubby pictured above. There is where you’ll find the corruption level 2 door and the sixth set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 7 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Within the maze, stride panning a pitfall, light calls through the window.
After the prison section, get to the point where you see a pile of barrels below the hole that you must jump up through.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Jump up through the hole, exit the circle room, and take the left.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Head down to the end of the hall and dispel the corruption level three door to collect the seventh set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 8 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
The Taken roil at cave’s bottom sends you to scurry over boulders into a ruined alcove.
Once you get to the room with the large Taken Blight, make your way through until you can look up and see the end. Below will be a platform that you’ll have to jump down to.
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Once you jump down, dispel the corruption level three door and collect the eighth set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 9 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
Within a tunnel on the broken cliffs, brace the Taken storm.
After the Taken Blight room, there will be a section where you’ll have to jump around a smaller Taken Blight. Make your way to the room highlighted in the image above. The final level three corruption door is in that hallway; dispel it and collect the ninth set of Ahamkara Bones.
Ahamkara Bones 10 location
Image: Bungie via Polygon
After defeating the final boss, this set of Ahamkara Bones is found directly beside the loot chest.
Marvel built its comic book revolution on the back of one idea: rendering colorful superheroes as relatable. In the mid 20th century, DC do-gooders were essentially square-jawed Sunday school teachers, which let Marvel corner the market on heroes with human depth and fragility. The Fantastic Four were vulnerable to insecurity and in-fighting. The X-Men represented the cost of bigotry on a wide scale.
But Spider-Man represented this new wave best. Consumed by youthful everyman angst and desperate to find balance in his life, Spider-Man is broadly sympathetic. We identify with his struggles and his little glimmers of connection and triumph — which makes him the perfect superhero for Thanksgiving. And Spider-Man writers know it.
Image: Jacob Chabot/Marvel Comics
Thanksgiving has a complicated history, tied to the roots of American colonialism, and more recently processed through a lens of joyful capitalism. But feeding friends and family is perhaps one of the most humane acts we can pursue. It’s less about the spirit of giving, and more about admitting that people have innate, basic needs, like food and social comfort, and that those needs are best fulfilled when people work in tandem. Honestly, we should try to do it more on every other day of the year: The number of people volunteering to help feed the homeless and families in need peaks around November and December, but that energy needs to be carried through the preceding 10 months, too.
Spider-Man represents these needs, even though very few of us have to balance photojournalist work, a fraught dating life, and pummeling Dr. Octopus. Peter Parker is often the most financially strapped among his Avengers buddies, and frequently the loneliest, too. Those are recognizable traits among many young people, even those without radioactive-spider powers. When you’re growing up and trying to figure out the world, it’s easy to feel lost and isolated. But feelings of loneliness spike during the holidays, meaning that there’s a good chance you’ll feel even more like Peter Parker when late November rolls around.
Image: Columbia Pictures/Disney Plus
It’s what makes the Thanksgiving scene in the 2002 Spider-Man film so engaging. That whole movie is an exercise in heart-on-your-sleeve sweetness. Everyone who’s seen it knows the Thanksgiving dinner rapidly descends into chaos, with Norman Osborn ominously sticking his fingers into Aunt May’s sweet-potato casserole, figuring out Spider-Man’s secret identity, and delivering a grossly sexist diatribe to his son Harry, leaving Harry and Mary Jane at odds with each other. Aunt May and Peter clearly wind up with a ton of leftovers after everyone else storms out.
But for Peter, who’s just lost his Uncle Ben and has been facing the initial trials of being Spider-Man, there’s a nice moment of personal respite at the opening of that scene, where he walks into a room where he knows he’s loved, bearing an offering of cranberry sauce,. Sure, everyone in that room is trying to hold things together. Mary Jane wants to impress Norman, Harry wants to impress Norman and Mary Jane, Peter loves Mary Jane but doesn’t dare hurt Harry, and Aunt May is finishing what’s presumably a dope turkey, in an attempt to care for all of them.
It’s the trying that counts: Life can be hard, weird, and cruel, but while sitting down for a meal with our nearest and dearest, maybe for at least a little while, we won’t need to have it all figured out.
Image: Sony Pictures Television/Disney Plus
Not all Spider-Man Thanksgiving dinners end up falling apart, and some succeed in reminding Peter that he isn’t alone. The first season of The Spectacular Spider-Man ends with a bang: One of Peter’s closest pals, Eddie Brock, has become Venom, and has threatened everyone Peter holds dear. This comes just after Peter himself was infected by the symbiote, and went through the now-iconic throes of pushing everyone away. Aunt May has just gotten out of the hospital, and even noted jerk “Flash” Thompson has given Peter hell for how awful he’s been acting.
Peter, attempting to make things right, opts to cook the Thanksgiving meal all by himself, but mostly succeeds in ruining the kitchen. No worries — Gwen Stacy and her father, along with a recuperating Aunt May and her doctor, all help out, and the episode concludes with a pleasant dinner. There are no big turns or twists, aside from Aunt May revealing that she’s publishing a cookbook. It’s just simple, earned solace in a life marked by chaos. Peter even gets a kiss from Gwen on his porch, a sequence conducted with a John Hughes sense of satisfying romantic flair.
Photo: Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagic
Various Spider-Man comics have also dabbled in seeing what Thanksgiving looks like when you’re young and arachnid-themed, but real life has associated Spider-Man with the holiday, too. Spider-Man is the only Marvel character to rate a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Other Marvel characters have appeared on floats, but only Spider-Man has been inflated to 80 feet and pulled through the Upper West Side. (That also makes him the only Marvel character to have his head horrifically torn open by a tree branch.)
From his first comic book appearance, Spider-Man has been a reminder that life is hard and complicated, and being a superhero doesn’t preclude anyone from experiencing ordinary frustrations, setbacks, and confusion. But no matter how Spider-Man’s Thanksgiving escapades turn out, they remind readers and viewers that the holiday is about the hope of mutual connection, support, and nurturing. Even if the girl of your dreams is out of reach and the Green Goblin is on your case, a table, some friends, and Aunt May’s rad turkey might just make everything better for a little while.
Whenever a new movie prequel is announced, even the core audience that loved the original work sometimes responds with a resounding ugh. Who can blame anyone for dismissing out of hand the marketing formulation that gave us 2007’s Hannibal Rising, 1979’s Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, or 2004’s Exorcist: The Beginning? Prequels tell stories where the end has been predetermined, often without beloved key actors, prompting unflattering comparisons to inimitable classics. (Like what happened with the Star Wars prequel movies.)
But once in a long while, prequels can also tell new stories that experiment with stylistic shifts and new characters. At their best, they can deepen an existing story, or offer additional dimension and insight into familiar characters. (Like what happened with… the Star Wars prequel movies.)
Prequels have become an overly familiar go-to move for anyone hoping to reverse-engineer a hit. But maybe the form has gotten a bad rap. A good prequel can be an escape hatch from dead-end sequels and tangled continuity. Sometimes they’re just baggage-shedding fun. With that in mind, let’s have a look at 10 prequel movies that actually are surprisingly worth your time.
A few ground rules: No Star Wars movies, because at this point, nearly half the Star Wars feature films in existence are prequels, and they’ve been discussed to death. Also out: alternate-timeline reboots (like the 2009 Star Trek), retellings with ambiguous relationships to previous films (like Rise of the Planet of the Apes or the 2006 James Bond movie Casino Royale), and movies set years before an iconic original film, but with no particular narrative or character connection to the earlier film (like the Predator prequel Prey). In other words, we’re keeping it challenging! You can sayWonder Woman is technically a prequel to Batman v. Supermanbecause it comes before it in the same continuity, but that isn’t really what Wonder Woman is doing on a narrative level. Here, on the other hand, are 10 pure prequel movies that prove jumping back in a story doesn’t have to be a doomed, last-ditch effort.
The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
Image: Lionsgate
Director: Francis Lawrence Where to watch: Currently in theatrical release
Has there been a 21st-century film series as successfully built around a single star as the Hunger Games movies are built around Jennifer Lawrence? The original Hunger Games movie quadrilogy features a stacked cast of Oscar nominees, but Lawrence’s steely resolve sells the humanity behind the world-building. So how the hell does a Hunger Games prequel manage without Katniss Everdeen?
Songbirds & Snakes makes the attempt by shifting character focus, turning the villain (President Snow, previously played by Donald Sutherland) into a good-looking, young pre-fascist, caught between a corrupt institution and more idealistic friends, and falling for an irresistibly feisty brunette. (Sound familiar? It’s the Attack of the Clones approach.) While Suzanne Collins’ books and Lawrence’s performance gave Katniss a directness and aversion to artifice that made her a compelling and unwilling Tribute, Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) and his Hunger Games mentee Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) have more complicated, less clear-eyed relationships with their respective worlds — and with each other. That adds an element of unpredictability to a story whose ultimate ending has already been dramatized.
Circling back to explain how certain aspects of series lore developed in-world can be a risky, hardcore-fans-only strategy, so it’s all the more impressive that The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is by turns brutal (for a PG-13 fantasy) and entertainingly daft. (At some points, it resembles a musical.) It’s also notable that the movie, perhaps owing to its literary source material, doesn’t tease a whole world of prequels, sequels, and spinoffs, even if some fans will hope for them anyway. The book and movie simply tell a compelling, sometimes haunting story that feels complete even in its ambiguities. In that way, it even outdoes its predecessors, none of which were expected to stand alone the same way.
Pearl (2022)
Photo: Christopher Moss/A24
Director: Ti West Where to watch: Showtime, Paramount Plus
Knowing the full backstory of Pearl, the elderly killer who picks off the cast and crew of a porn movie in Ti West’s superior slasher X, can diminish the way X evokes a lifetime of thwarted dreams. But at least West and his star Mia Goth came by Pearl’s story honestly: While quarantining prior to filming X in 2021, they wound up working out a character history and accompanying screenplay, shooting this companion prequel on the fly alongside the original film.
That explains why Pearl feels like a bit more of a low-key creative exercise compared to the fully developed X — but what an exercise! Pearl pulls from 1950s Technicolor melodramas, its Silent Era period setting, and its status as a contemporary pandemic production, all tied together with Goth’s fierce performance. It avoids killing X’s vibe because Pearl never feels especially opportunistic: It’s a prequel that stays true to its conception as an artistic experiment.
Orphan: First Kill (2022)
Photo: Steve Ackerman/Paramount Pictures
Director: William Brent Bell Where to watch: Prime Video, Paramount Plus
Orphan: First Kill is undoubtedly cheaper-looking than the slick 2009 original. It also has a counterintuitive reversal worthy of Benjamin Button: While the first movie has then-tween Isabelle Fuhrman playing a little girl who’s secretly a murderous grown woman with proportional dwarfism, the 2022 prequel uses camera tricks and good old-fashioned great acting to have now-adult Fuhrman play the same character when she’s supposed to look even younger.
Orphan: First Kill uses the audience’s presumed knowledge of the first movie’s wild twist as a distraction, unleashing a second, unrelated but brilliant twist upon a seemingly straightforward story that has Esther (Fuhrman) claiming to be the long-missing daughter of a well-to-do suburban couple. It’s a too-rare case of a horror prequel playing better — cleverer, weirder, more daring — for viewers who keep the original’s triumphs in mind.
300: Rise of an Empire (2014)
Image: Warner Bros/Everett Collection
Director: Noam Munro Where to watch: DirecTV; streaming rental
Following up Zack Snyder’s influential megahit 300 was always a fool’s errand, one especially unlikely to succeed without Snyder directing or Gerard Butler starring. (In retrospect, it seems amazing that this seven-years-later prequel made it past the $100 million mark at the box office essentially on branding alone.) That said, maybe fool’s errands would have a better reputation if more of them featured Eva Green.
In300: Rise of an Empire, Green plays Artemisia, naval officer and secret architect of an ongoing conflict between the Greeks and the Persians. For Green, that entails kissing a severed head on the lips, wearing a shiny dress while occupying a boat-throne, and having rough recruitment sex with the enemy. (She even gets a mini-prequel-within-the-prequel to explain her origin story.) Her movie-star energy may make the rest of the movie dim by comparison (the Snyder-knockoff battlescapes had greater exploitation-movie kick in the film’s 3-D theatrical release), but that makes sense — she dominates the original 300 in the same way.
Prometheus (2012)
Image: 20th Century Fox/Everett Collection
Director: Ridley Scott Where to watch: Streaming rental
George Lucas must have felt a lot less lonely in the decade following the end of his Star Wars prequel trilogy, as a host of directors beloved of surly Gen-X males, like Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) and the Wachowskis (The Matrix), made their own ill-regarded prequels and sequels. In 2012, it was Ridley Scott’s turn to make an underappreciated prequel to his sci-fi classic Alien. Like another film on this list, Prometheus feels meaner than its predecessor. (Though Alien: Covenant, also good but less of a prequel, is even nastier).
That alone feels like a refreshing rejection of the fan service prequels often represent. The movie itself has a menacing, terrible grandeur, using xenomorph-related imagery and mythology to explore the idea of creations and creators pitted against each other in an impossible struggle.
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Photo: Murray Close/20th Century Fox
Director: Matthew Vaughn Where to watch: Starz
You know what’s worse than a prequel? A movie hastily reconfigured as a trilogy-capper, against all evidence to the contrary. The X-Men comics contain vast numbers of characters and stories for potential adaptation, yet for some reason, Fox hedged its bets with X-Men: The Last Stand, positioning it as an abbreviated grand finale that killed off major characters abruptly, treated famous storylines carelessly, then cravenly left a few doors ajar for the future sequels the studio seemed to be spurning.
So it was a blessed relief (and, at the time, surprise) that the mainline X-Men series went into prequel mode instead, with this stylish, zippy period story about how Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) met as young men in the 1960s and formed an early iteration of the superhero team.
X-Men: First Class provided a badly needed reset for the franchise, not in terms of timeline (Days of Future Past attempted that a few years later), but in form, casting aside various Canadian locations in favor of a globetrotting James Bond-esque fantasy. It felt capricious to swerve the story into a prequel world, but the approach let the X-Men series open up a whole new avenue, resulting in one of the best superhero movies of the modern era.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
Image: Screen Gems/Everett Collection
Director: Patrick Tatopoulos Where to watch: AMC Plus
On paper, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans represents everything wrong with prequels. It jettisons the charismatic star of the first two movies, Kate Beckinsale, to retell a story the earlier movies covered in mere minutes of exposition. In this case, it’s a historical rundown on the werewolf uprising that led to a generations-long conflict between werewolves and vampires.
Yet returning to the origin of the werewolf-vampire battles lends Rise of the Lycans a medieval-fantasy kick; it’s pulpier, lustier, and more all-around entertaining than any other Underworld entry, and one that best fulfills the lizard-brained promise of supernatural creatures in love and at war.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Image: Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Steven Spielberg Where to watch: Disney Plus, Paramount Plus
A lot of folks first heard the term “prequel” in connection with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of the highest-profile pure prequels that had yet been released in 1984. At first, it feels strange that Spielberg and Lucas bothered situating this movie before Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s not as if the first film had such a neatly resolved happy ending that it precluded further adventures, and Indiana Jones’ nature suggests his whole life is a series of adventures. The reason it makes sense for Temple of Doom to take place before Raiders turns out to be what put off some audiences. (Not exclusively; there’s also the racism.)
As it turns out, this is a meaner movie, with a more callous Dr. Jones pursuing “fortune and glory,” bickering with a lady, and repeatedly endangering his child sidekick. Anyone who felt they were acclimated to Indiana Jones’ rhythms might still be thrown off: Temple of Doom is grosser, more violent, and eclectic enough to accommodate a James Bond homage, a musical number, and a literal rollercoaster ride. Apart from its racial insensitivity (which will understandably not be easy for many viewers to hurdle), it’s still the most interesting and best-crafted of the four post-Raiders Indy movies.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Image: 20th Century Fox/Everett Collection
Director: J. Lee Thompson Where to watch: Starz
The original Planet of the Apes series is so dependent on time-travel that you could claim it doesn’t contain any true prequels, just stories kicked into gear by a potential temporal paradox. That feels truer of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, though, than it does for Conquest, which dramatizes the story of ape oppression and uprising that eventually leads into the 1968 original.
Thefirst wave of Apes movies notoriously decreased in budget with each entry, but director J. Lee Thompson stretches his resources impressively far in this fourth installment, creating an evocative future city that gets absolutely and satisfyingly trashed by the apes resisting slavery to humanity. Sometimes actually witnessing the watershed event from a film series’ lore is as powerful and exciting as it’s supposed to be.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Image: Everett Collection
Director: Sergio Leone Where to watch: Streaming rental
The surprising part about this one isn’t the quality — the third in Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy is an acknowledged classic. But how often is the third movie in a trilogy the best one, and how often is a third movie in a trilogy set entirely before its predecessors?
It seems unlikely that the intent was to add backstory to Clint Eastwood’s nameless character (here nicknamed “Blondie”), even if the movie does show him acquiring his iconic poncho. Leone probably just wanted to set his three-hour epic during the Civil War, allowing for more epic sweep than the comparably smaller post-war stories of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. That decision gives The Good, the Bad and the Ugly some extra weight without sacrificing his stylizations.
If anything, those go even further than the film’s predecessors, with close-ups, exaggerated perspectives, and drawn-out confrontations galore. But having the film’s trio of gunslingers (Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef) repeatedly crossing through the ongoing wreckage of the Civil War on their competing quests for graveyard treasure gives the story a sense of real-life scale that also makes their violence seem small compared to the senseless slaughter around them.
Even vampires deserve treats. One of the many sacrifices that people make in exchange for eternal life in vampire lore is flavor. They can only eat one thing for the rest of their elongated lives, and it’s a metallic, salty, sinister thing. We all know this. We accept this. But vampires shouldn’t have to give up texture, too. So, in 2013, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch was brave enough to create a vampire with the vision to turn that blood into something good to eat: Eve and her blood Popsicles in Only Lovers Left Alive.
As a millennial woman, I have consumed more than my fair share of vampire stories. I grew up entranced by Interview with the Vampire. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series of books and films fell into my lap right on the heels of another fantasy series that, er, need not be named. Then there was True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, binge-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the then-new app Hulu. But just once has drinking blood ever looked appetizing to me. Once have I ever vanted to suck blood, and that’s thanks to Eve.
Jarmusch’s moody hangout comedy stars Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as vampires named Adam and Eve (don’t worry about it) who’ve been on-again-off-again spouses for centuries and reunite when Adam is in a particular state of ennui. He’s got a hookup at a local blood bank, so he doesn’t need to do any killing. But Eve gets experimental. In an effort to surprise and cheer Adam up, she freezes some O negative. Very refreshing, especially when you’re in “a hot spot,” she says. Now, Hiddleston enjoying “blood on a stick” is a finger-licking image by itself, but this is not that kind of thirst blog. Hand to Lilith, this is the first and only time I have felt represented on screen by a fictional vampire. This is exactly the type of thing I would do if I were undead. I love to eat Popsicles. I love to make Popsicles.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had limited ingredients in your house — because of money, college, a thunderstorm, or a pandemic, for example — and had to get creative in order to avoid eating the same thing every day? Imagine that plus immortality. Shouldn’t vampires be messing around in the kitchen in an attempt to spice up their lives, like, all the time? The titular cannibal on Hannibal enjoyed sanguinaccio dolce, an Italian pudding, with human blood instead of the traditional pig’s blood. You can’t tell me Lestat wouldn’t be into that.
Vampires are inventive, prolific even, in many ways. Across literature, film, and television, their fighting styles vary. They choose to spend their daytime hours in different ways. You can always count on a fictional vampire to experiment with fashion. But not food. Whether the story is romantic or horrifying or a bit of both, we usually see vampires feeding on fresh human blood by sucking directly from their victim’s neck, wrist if they’re polite, or femoral artery if they’re nasty. It can be scary or erotic, but never exactly tasty. If a vampire doesn’t want to kill, and we have plenty of sullen and brooding faces in popular culture, they’ll find more palatable methods. The immortal teenagers on The Vampire Diaries drink blood-filled IV bags like Capri-Suns. Baz in Rainbow Rowell’s Carry Onseries, Interview with the Vampire’s Louis de Pointe du Lac, and the “vegetarian” Cullen family in the Twilight series hunt animals. Still, they’re drinking from the source. There’s no sense of fun. There’s no flair.
I can think of some notable exceptions. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vampire Spike alludes to enhancing his blood with burba weed for flavor and crushed-up Weetabix for texture. At least once in season 6 we see him doing it, so we know it wasn’t a dry joke (hard to tell with those Whedon types). What We Do in the Shadows has a little fun, too. The vampires can get high off the blood of people who are on drugs. They can mix blood with Bud Light and get drunk. Still, that’s not very elegant or inventive. I expect more from them.
Others just merit an honorable mention. The glamorous antagonist known only as the Countess in the 1985 sex comedy Once Bitten drinks a glass of blood with a celery stalk. Occasionally you’ll see vampires drink their blood from a red wine glass or a flask. Presentation is important, so I appreciate that. Amy Heckerling’s romantic comedy Vamps mixes it up by having Krysten Ritter stick a straw into the rat she’s draining. That’s (a) gross and (b) boring! And True Blood, of course, is built around a synthetic blood that vampires can buy bottled and drink “out” in society. However, many of the vampires on True Blood prefer the real thing and tend to drink it in the usual way. Russell will stick his hand into a human’s chest cavity and pull out their heart, but he apparently can’t be bothered to prepare his food.
Come on! Where are the foodie vampires? I know that Hollywood’s best and brightest can do better. What about blood foam? Blood soup is already a dish in many cuisines. There are lots of foods cooked with blood, like black pudding or coq au vin. Where’s the whipping, frying, curdling, and coagulating? Show me a vampire starting the day with a steaming cup of hot blood. I don’t see why you couldn’t make freeze-dried astronaut blood for an afternoon snack. If Popsicles are possible, why not a bloody shaved ice, slushie, or sorbet?
I don’t even think I’ve ever seen a vampire lick a rare steak. Let’s face it: Being a vampire looks fun! Except for drinking blood, of course. That can change. If vampire fiction is here to stay, we owe it to them to give them something good-looking to eat instead of just someone good-looking to eat.
Stories, especially beloved stories, have a tendency to bleed past their borders and escape their original bodies. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is among many well-loved works that have long since taken on new shapes, shifting forms constantly. The epistolary tale of vampires has hundreds upon hundreds of adaptations, with one domineering throughline: Stoker’s lasting characterization of the elegant, verbose, vampiric count himself.
Given the breadth and variety of the landscape, it can be difficult, at this point, to iterate on Dracula in a way that feels fresh — which is why Dimension 20’s Coffin Run was, and continues to be, such a delight.
Coffin Run, a Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series, premiered in the summer of 2022. The six-episode run, described on Dropout’s website as “a tale as old as many lifetimes,” was helmed by storyteller and game master Jasmine Bhullar and starred Zac Oyama, Erika Ishii, Isabella Roland, and Carlos Luna. Coffin Run emerged from Bhullar’s love of Stoker’s novel, she told CBR in 2022, as well as comedic source material like Young Frankenstein and What We Do in the Shadows.
The cast of the series shines as archetypical members of Dracula’s retinue, brought together to ferry the Count (who sustains undeath-threatening injuries at the top of the series) home to Castle Dracula in his coffin. Oyama plays Squing, a Nosferatu-like vampire who is Dracula’s “firstborn,” turned as a child and preserved forever. Roland plays Dr. Aleksandr Astrovsky, a brash, invigorated mad scientist figure. Luna plays Wetzel, a young human who lives as Dracula’s plaything in hope of becoming a vampire himself. And Ishii plays May Wong, one of Dracula’s vampire brides, who used to be an actress in New York.
Image: Dropout
Coffin Run unfolds as a love letter to Dracula, both the form of the novel and the vampire himself. The story roots itself in Stoker’s work from the start, anchoring the narrative in the epistolary form. It’s letters all the way down, really (and not just inside Squing, who has a tendency to eat them). The series opens on Dracula himself standing over a writing desk, penning a letter to Squing. The letter takes a journey across the sea before it arrives at the Gold Crona Inn — much like Jonathan Harker at the outset of Dracula. From there, letters guide the narrative, arriving for the players at key moments.
Letters, as a kind of delivery system for the story, are adeptly wielded by Bhullar — because of the fickle nature of their author, Dracula, when heartfelt sentiments are poured out in the letters there’s a lingering sense of unease, perpetuated by the arrival of letters that reveal that the Count’s feelings for his coffin-bearing friends and family might not be what they seem. Wetzel, for example, becomes disillusioned with the Count as the series goes on, slowly beginning to distrust him, while May realizes that her own adoration for Dracula may be more one-sided.
Materially, Coffin Run pays beautiful homage to the Gothic lushness of Dracula. When players are handed letters, they receive actual letters at the table, passed along with a glowing candlestick. In the final fight, Dracula’s vitality is measured by vials of “blood” poured into a crystal goblet by Bhullar and then consumed as the vampire comes back to himself. Black-and-white film adaptations get a nod in the grayscale miniatures and the monochromatic set. The special effects all come together to create a world that feels incredibly familiar to horror fans as well as uniquely new — Rick Perry, production designer and creative producer for Dropout, gets heaps of nods throughout the series for his work on the sets and miniatures, as do the crew in a talkback episode post-series.
Image: Dropout
From the Scooby-Doo-like title sequence to the performances, the crew and cast of Coffin Run perfectly hone in on the comedic influences Bhullar cited for the series, as well as the inherent ironies of the source material. May, the classically gorgeous vampire bride, is played by Ishii with a gleeful, over-the-top accent, as is Roland’s Dr. Astrovsky. Squing, as Dracula’s firstborn, is constantly baffled by modern technology, referring to the train that delivers Dracula’s coffin as a “metal tube.” Seemingly, his lack of understanding stems from apathy, rather than access. Castle Dracula, when the story eventually arrives there, is similarly frozen in time, preserved by caretakers who eventually end up ceding the castle to antiquers and “Lairbnb” opportunists.
So much of vampiric representation in pop culture is rooted in Dracula’s particular brand of allure. Even Dungeons & Dragons has its own storied distillation of Stoker’s Transylvania and the titular count in the enigmatic Strahd von Zarovich and the land of Ravenloft. The cast and crew of Coffin Run do a fantastic job of preserving the larger-than-life presence of Dracula in the story, from adding a silhouetted batwing shadow over Bhullar when she speaks to characters as Dracula to character arcs that nod at the ubiquity of the Count and his story. In discussing his place with Dracula at the end of the tale, Wetzel says, “It’s like everyone in [Castle Dracula], they’re just gonna be in there for a while, you know? It’s like the same thing over and over again. Same stuff.”
No adaptation is perfect — with Dracula in the public domain and vampires back in the zeitgeist (hello, Interview with the Vampire, and the resurgence of Twilight, and a million other fanged options), there will likely be hundreds more distillations in the future. Coffin Run takes a pile of well-known, over-offered ingredients — Dracula, the undying bogs of Transylvania, letters, a carriage ride through wolf-stalked trees — and makes something wonderfully new from them.
At the very least, it’s worth sinking your teeth into.
Goth fashion isn’t new, but fashion associated with the vampire scene has seen a resurgence as the vampire has once again grown in popularity through the success of the 2022 adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, as well as the Castlevania franchise seeing a resurgence with its Netflix series. Once again, the vampire has permeated the mainstream, sinking its fangs into an entirely new generation, coupled with an interest in historical fashion and what this timeless creature has come to represent. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometime in 2021, while cleaning out my wardrobe, I decided to dress like I could fit into one of Koji Igarashi’s Castlevania games.
The look of the vampire is ageless but hard to define. It exists somewhere between Victorian fashion and goth subculture, and has morphed into different subsets and microtrends over the past few decades. It can be black frocks or Tom Cruise’s frilled shirts and brocade vests in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. It could be one of Ayami Kojima’s gorgeous oil painting illustrations of Alucard and various Belmont family members from the Castlevania series.
It was my interest in period fashion and various subcultures that brought me to dress like a Castlevania vampire for a year. (That and having disposable income as an adult.) Would I have dressed this way as a teenager? Probably. The modern vampire has often been associated with androgyny, and it’s something I’ve always personally gravitated toward. Naturally, there are also some subsets to this. There is the more industrial goth that is sometimes blended with mid-’80s aesthetics, extremely heavy makeup and all, or the “romantic” goth associated with ruffled shirts, corsets, and modified pieces of Victorian clothing.
The vampire is associated with so many various interpretations that it’s hard to pin down just what exactly defines it — outside of fangs, odd-colored eyes, and a penchant for the night. (I didn’t end up ordering a pair of fangs — I’m a little too self-conscious about my teeth — but someone else I know wears their pair almost religiously.)
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Image: Konami
I scoured the internet for sellers that would provide exactly what I was looking for: linen shirts with ruffles, tightly-laced corsets, leather trousers, knee-high boots, everything I associated with the gorgeous Gothic designs Kojima incorporated in art of characters like Alucard and Mathias Cronqvist, and in one-off illustrations she’s done that feature these ephemeral creatures. I packed my closet with velvet capelets from Dark in Love, scoured secondhand shops for antique Victorian brooches and silk ribbons I would tie my then-shoulder-length hair with. To cement the vampire image, I ordered matte black lipstick to use exclusively on my upper lip, in combination with full-coverage foundation to get that perfectly flawless countenance coined as “vampire skin,” which appeared as a full-blown trend in 2022. Naturally, I also wore colored contacts and heavy eyeliner to further accentuate the look.
I felt great assembling these outfits, spending the time to practice and perfectly apply my makeup, and walking around in clothing that made me feel extremely comfortable. I would get stopped from time to time by random passersby, but since Germany has a history of a thriving goth subculture and scene, I never received any disparaging remarks. It was all compliments, which further cemented my confidence in walking around dressed to the nines, inspired by one of my favorite artists and game series of all time.
Many others are drawn to the way the vampire aesthetic lets self-expression and various interests converge. “Being into Victorian fashion, architecture, and even smaller subcultures like Visual Kei when I was a teenager was sort of how I got my start into vampire fashion,” said Storm, a former member of the fang community (slang for vampire communities, or in some cases even clans) when asked about what drew them to the subculture. “My interests in fashion and subculture merged with my nerdiness when I discovered the game Vampire: The Masquerade.”
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Image: Konami
Don Henrie, “The Human Vampire,” was a popular internet personality in the early 2000s, and was even featured in a National Geographic program and appeared on SyFy’s Mad Mad House. He was one of the first glimpses into what bridging the vampire lifestyle and fashion movement was like during that era. There was also the (moderate) success of Queen of the Damned, Van Helsing, and Underworld roughly around the same time. The website VampireFreaks began in 1999, functioning as a MySpace for goths; it still exists today, now as an online shop that sells goth-related apparel and goods.
This style of fashion has also created a community. “I ended up becoming part of an online community in the early 2000s, which was super into all of the Vampire: The Masquerade clans. It’s actually how a lot of ‘vampire clans’ in the physical world formed,” Storm said. One of the more popular “vampire clans” was featured on Buzzfeed in 2018, where host Selom received her own pair of vampire fangs. Vampire fangs can definitely be a fashion statement; I know a few people who wear them without joining a clan, as they’ve become more accessible through sellers like Kaos Kustom Fangs. But for clan members, it’s more or less a lifestyle they subscribe to. I never joined a clan myself, and only learned the inner workings of them through friends who had participated in the culture, but living in a major metropolitan city meant that I definitely wasn’t alone in dressing outside of the norm. I was friends with former cyber goths, and while they had more or less toned down their looks, they still dressed in mostly all black and gravitated toward voluminous black dresses with heeled boots.
Having orbited those circles and now seeing the resurgence of vampire media, it feels like the scene is in the middle of an upswing. Would I dress like a “vampire” again? The answer is maybe, mostly because where I live now doesn’t accommodate it all that well. (Wearing black velvet in sweltering summer heat doesn’t bode well for anyone.) But it was definitely one of my favorite periods of personal fashion, and a fulfilling period of self-expression. So maybe I’ll throw everything together for a night at the club. Regardless, it’s great to see this subset of goth subculture still alive and well.
Blizzard revealed the latest hero to join the ever-growing roster of its shooter Overwatch 2 at Blizzcon 2023. During an interview at the convention, Polygon got more details about Mauga, what players can expect from him, and the process of creating a new tank.
“Mauga is a damaged-based tank, and how he sustains himself and his team is through damage,” said lead hero designer Alec Dawson. He was designed based on his weapons, with his abilities centered around doing as much damage as possible. The designers hope this focus on damage will make him more appealing to new players.
The team wanted to ensure his abilities felt good when using both chain guns, but they also wanted to make sure players couldn’t “wipe people out immediately.” To combat that, Mauga has a big spread on both of his guns. At the same time, this makes him a threat in close quarters. “You don’t want to play with Mauga up close unless you know you’re going to take him out,” said Dawson.
Mauga’s Overrun charging ability makes him virtually unstoppable, even against sleep darts. “He uses it to get where he wants to go,” said Dawson. For a nice cherry on top, whenever Mauga directly hits an opponent while using Overrun, he’ll slam them to the ground, stunning them while other nearby opponents will be sent flying.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Mauga’s ultimate, Cage Fight, creates a zone that traps opponents and blocks healing from the outside of it. What makes his ultimate even more dangerous is that Cage Fight stays active even if Mauga dies. Support hero Lifeweaver can pull Mauga out of the ultimate, but the enemy players will still be trapped inside until the ability runs out.
Even though he’s a tank, Mauga can do more damage than some DPS heroes, said Dawson. To counter that, opposing teams can attack Mauga while he’s reloading or has burned through his abilities. “He’s such a big body that he really needs support. He needs a high healing output to keep him up at times.”
When it came to creating Mauga, the dev team worked closely with a culture consultant team to ensure the studio displayed him in a way that would be respectful to the Samoan community. “We worked with a traditional tattoo artist from the Samoan culture to guide us. We tried to get as authentic as possible and as close to real as our engines could handle. And it turned out great,” said hero design producer Kenny Hudson.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
When Mauga was first being tested, the team originally had one iteration where his right gun only dealt critical damage to enemies in the air to help tanks fight flying-based heroes. As time went on, the team scrapped that, and now the right gun deals critical damage whenever an enemy is set on fire first with his left gun. But the idea to have him use two big guns was something the dev team always intended to do. “We always kinda knew that he was going to be a tank with two big main guns, and we wanted to make them just as important and just as useful to players as the other one. We didn’t want one to outshine the other,” said Hudson.
One of the challenges the dev team faced was making the visual cues noticeable to players when Mauga uses his Cardiac Overdrive ability, which allows Mauga and his team members to heal whenever they damage an opponent. So the dev team revisited an old idea where Roadhog’s ability would heal everyone around him. This helped them find the “sweet spot” of not overwhelming the player with too much going on screen. “We don’t like throwing things away. Even if it doesn’t work out for a certain hero, it can come back later on for another one,” said senior test analyst Foster Elmendorf. To help further prove their point, Elmendorf explained how Mauga’s ultimate was originally D.va’s, which involved her making “a dome of lasers.”
The team has been working on Mauga for some time. Originally, he was supposed to be released in season 2 instead of Ramattra, “but the team really wanted to take some more time to get the kit just right,” said Dawson. Pushing Mauga back allowed the dev team to polish him up and ensure his abilities played smoothly with one another.
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